VirtualBox, an open source x86 virtualization project available for free has just hit version 4.2.8. The new version, a 109 megabyte download, features the following fixes and changes:
– VMM: fixed guest crash with huge amount of guest RAM on VT-x hosts (bug #11306)
– GUI: fixed a layout bug in the Mac OS X clone VM dialog (bug #10982).
– GUI: not all the translation tags were taken into account during the language switch (bug #11342).
– GUI: take guest screenshot dialog sometimes had no keyboard input available on Windows host.
– Main/Machine: fix generation of spurious event for inaccessible VMs which triggered an endless event generation loop in cooperation with the GUI which became unresponsive (4.2.6 regression, bug #11323).
– Main/Display: fix for an access violation under certain conditions in multi-monitor configurations (bug #10539).
– Main/Metrics: network metrics are now collected for active (up) interfaces only, the state of an interface being evaluated when the associated metric is enabled via setupMetrics.
– Snapshots: reduce the time for merging snapshots under certain conditions.
– Storage: fixed data corruption after resizing a VDI image under certain circumstances (bug #11344).
– Storage: fixed non working online merging of snapshots (4.2.6 regression, bug #11359).
– Storage: fixed crash when connecting to certain QNAP iSCSI targets.
– Storage: fixed incompatibility of VHD differencing images with Hyper-V (bug #5990).
– Bridged Networking: fixed TCP pseudo header checksum computation for IPv6 (bug #9380).
– 3D support: fix Battlefield 1942 game crashes (bug #11369).
– Settings: really sanitize the name of VM folders and settings file, the code was disabled before (bug #10549).
– Settings: allow to change VRDE settings for saved VMs.
– VBoxManage: don’t crash during screenshotpng if there is no display (bug #11363).
– Linux hosts: work around gcc bug 55940 which might lead to wrong kernel module code if gcc 4.7 is used to compile the 32-bit Linux host kernel (bug #11035).
– Linux hosts: fixed inconsistent lock state and deadlock warnings on module load and VM startup when CONFIG_PROVE_LOCKING is enabled (bug #11318).
– Linux hosts: made “]” key work again on Japanese keyboards.
– Mac OS X hosts: don’t crash the kernel during dtrace if the VBox kernel extensions are loaded (10.6 hosts only; bug #11273).
– Solaris / Mac OS X hosts: machine CPU load metrics now report 100% when all cores are fully utilized (used to be a single core).
– Solaris 11 host installer: wait for any services left over from a previous installation to be terminated to avoid confusing SMF.
– Guest Additions: don’t block signals for processes executed via guest control.
– Guest Additions: fixed a small memory leak in VBoxService (bug #10970).
– Windows Additions: fixed shared folder issue with large reads/writes on 64 bit Windows guests (bug #11115).
– Linux Additions: Linux 3.8 compile fixes (bug #11036).
– X11 Additions: fixed blocked SIGALRM in 3D desktop sessions (bug #10987).
– X11 Additions: fixed an unresolved reference in vboxvideo_drv for X.org 6.8 guests and before (e.g. RHEL4; 4.2.0 regression).
– X11 Additions: fixed screen automatic resizing for guests with X.org 1.3 or older (4.2.0 regression).
VirtualBox 4.2.8 is available for free and requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 or later and an Intel-based Mac to install and run.
If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback, please let us know.