source: vbox/trunk/doc/manual/en_US/user_GuestAdditions.xml@ 81589

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<chapter id="guestadditions">

  <title>Guest Additions</title>

  <para>
    The previous chapter covered getting started with &product-name; and
    installing operating systems in a virtual machine. For any serious
    and interactive use, the &product-name; Guest Additions will make
    your life much easier by providing closer integration between host
    and guest and improving the interactive performance of guest
    systems. This chapter describes the Guest Additions in detail.
  </para>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-intro">

    <title>Introduction to Guest Additions</title>

    <para>
      As mentioned in <xref linkend="virtintro" />, the Guest Additions
      are designed to be installed <emphasis>inside</emphasis> a virtual
      machine after the guest operating system has been installed. They
      consist of device drivers and system applications that optimize
      the guest operating system for better performance and usability.
      See <xref linkend="guestossupport" /> for details on what guest
      operating systems are fully supported with Guest Additions by
      &product-name;.
    </para>

    <para>
      The &product-name; Guest Additions for all supported guest
      operating systems are provided as a single CD-ROM image file which
      is called <computeroutput>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</computeroutput>.
      This image file is located in the installation directory of
      &product-name;. To install the Guest Additions for a particular
      VM, you mount this ISO file in your VM as a virtual CD-ROM and
      install from there.
    </para>

    <para>
      The Guest Additions offer the following features:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Mouse pointer integration</emphasis>. To
          overcome the limitations for mouse support described in
          <xref linkend="keyb_mouse_normal" />, this feature provides
          you with seamless mouse support. You will only have one mouse
          pointer and pressing the Host key is no longer required to
          "free" the mouse from being captured by the guest OS. To make
          this work, a special mouse driver is installed in the guest
          that communicates with the "real" mouse driver on your host
          and moves the guest mouse pointer accordingly.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Shared folders.</emphasis> These provide
          an easy way to exchange files between the host and the guest.
          Much like ordinary Windows network shares, you can tell
          &product-name; to treat a certain host directory as a shared
          folder, and &product-name; will make it available to the guest
          operating system as a network share, irrespective of whether
          guest actually has a network. See
          <xref
            linkend="sharedfolders" />.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Better video support.</emphasis> While
          the virtual graphics card which &product-name; emulates for
          any guest operating system provides all the basic features,
          the custom video drivers that are installed with the Guest
          Additions provide you with extra high and non-standard video
          modes, as well as accelerated video performance.
        </para>

        <para>
          In addition, with Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests,
          you can resize the virtual machine's window if the Guest
          Additions are installed. The video resolution in the guest
          will be automatically adjusted, as if you had manually entered
          an arbitrary resolution in the guest's
          <emphasis role="bold">Display</emphasis> settings. See
          <xref linkend="intro-resize-window" />.
        </para>

        <para>
          If the Guest Additions are installed, 3D graphics and 2D video
          for guest applications can be accelerated. See
          <xref linkend="guestadd-video" />.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Seamless windows.</emphasis> With this
          feature, the individual windows that are displayed on the
          desktop of the virtual machine can be mapped on the host's
          desktop, as if the underlying application was actually running
          on the host. See <xref linkend="seamlesswindows" />.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Generic host/guest communication
          channels.</emphasis> The Guest Additions enable you to control
          and monitor guest execution. The "guest properties" provide a
          generic string-based mechanism to exchange data bits between a
          guest and a host, some of which have special meanings for
          controlling and monitoring the guest. See
          <xref linkend="guestadd-guestprops" />.
        </para>

        <para>
          Additionally, applications can be started in a guest from the
          host. See <xref linkend="guestadd-guestcontrol" />.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Time synchronization.</emphasis> With
          the Guest Additions installed, &product-name; can ensure that
          the guest's system time is better synchronized with that of
          the host.
        </para>

        <para>
          For various reasons, the time in the guest might run at a
          slightly different rate than the time on the host. The host
          could be receiving updates through NTP and its own time might
          not run linearly. A VM could also be paused, which stops the
          flow of time in the guest for a shorter or longer period of
          time. When the wall clock time between the guest and host only
          differs slightly, the time synchronization service attempts to
          gradually and smoothly adjust the guest time in small
          increments to either "catch up" or "lose" time. When the
          difference is too great, for example if a VM paused for hours
          or restored from saved state, the guest time is changed
          immediately, without a gradual adjustment.
        </para>

        <para>
          The Guest Additions will resynchronize the time regularly. See
          <xref linkend="changetimesync" /> for how to configure the
          parameters of the time synchronization mechanism.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Shared clipboard.</emphasis> With the
          Guest Additions installed, the clipboard of the guest
          operating system can optionally be shared with your host
          operating system. See <xref linkend="generalsettings" />.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Automated logins.</emphasis> Also called
          credentials passing. See <xref linkend="autologon" />.
        </para>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <para>
      Each version of &product-name;, even minor releases, ship with
      their own version of the Guest Additions. While the interfaces
      through which the &product-name; core communicates with the Guest
      Additions are kept stable so that Guest Additions already
      installed in a VM should continue to work when &product-name; is
      upgraded on the host, for best results, it is recommended to keep
      the Guest Additions at the same version.
    </para>

    <para>
      The Windows and Linux Guest Additions therefore check
      automatically whether they have to be updated. If the host is
      running a newer &product-name; version than the Guest Additions, a
      notification with further instructions is displayed in the guest.
    </para>

    <para>
      To disable this update check for the Guest Additions of a given
      virtual machine, set the value of its
      <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/CheckHostVersion</computeroutput>
      guest property to <computeroutput>0</computeroutput>. See
      <xref
    linkend="guestadd-guestprops" />.
    </para>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-install">

    <title>Installing and Maintaining Guest Additions</title>

    <para>
      Guest Additions are available for virtual machines running
      Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris, or OS/2. The following sections
      describe the specifics of each variant in detail.
    </para>

    <sect2 id="additions-windows">

      <title>Guest Additions for Windows</title>

      <para>
        The &product-name; Windows Guest Additions are designed to be
        installed in a virtual machine running a Windows operating
        system. The following versions of Windows guests are supported:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (any service pack)
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows 2000 (any service pack)
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows XP (any service pack)
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (any service pack)
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows Server 2008
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows Vista (all editions)
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows 7 (all editions)
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows 8 (all editions)
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows 10 RTM build 10240
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Microsoft Windows Server 2012
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <sect3 id="mountingadditionsiso">

        <title>Installing the Windows Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          In the <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu in the
          virtual machine's menu bar, &product-name; has a menu item
          <emphasis role="bold">Insert Guest Additions CD
          Image</emphasis>, which mounts the Guest Additions ISO file
          inside your virtual machine. A Windows guest should then
          automatically start the Guest Additions installer, which
          installs the Guest Additions on your Windows guest.
        </para>

        <para>
          For other guest operating systems, or if automatic start of
          software on a CD is disabled, you need to do a manual start of
          the installer.
        </para>

        <note>
          <para>
            For the basic Direct3D acceleration to work in a Windows
            guest, you have to install the WDDM video driver available
            for Windows Vista or later.
          </para>

          <para>
            For Windows 8 and later, only the WDDM Direct3D video driver
            is available. For basic Direct3D acceleration to work in
            Windows XP guests, you have to install the Guest Additions
            in Safe Mode. See <xref linkend="KnownIssues" /> for
            details.
          </para>
        </note>

        <para>
          If you prefer to mount the Guest Additions manually, you can
          perform the following steps:
        </para>

        <orderedlist>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Start the virtual machine in which you have installed
              Windows.
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Select <emphasis role="bold">Mount CD/DVD-ROM</emphasis>
              from the <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu in
              the virtual machine's menu bar and then
              <emphasis role="bold">CD/DVD-ROM Image</emphasis>. This
              displays the Virtual Media Manager, described in
              <xref
            linkend="vdis" />.
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              In the Virtual Media Manager, click
              <emphasis role="bold">Add</emphasis> and browse your host
              file system for the
              <computeroutput>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</computeroutput>
              file.
            </para>

            <itemizedlist>

              <listitem>
                <para>
                  On a Windows host, this file is in the &product-name;
                  installation directory, usually in
                  <computeroutput>C:\Program
                  files\Oracle\VirtualBox</computeroutput>.
                </para>
              </listitem>

              <listitem>
                <para>
                  On Mac OS X hosts, this file is in the application
                  bundle of &product-name;. Right-click on the
                  &product-name; icon in Finder and choose
                  <emphasis role="bold">Show Package
                  Contents</emphasis>. The file is located in the
                  <computeroutput>Contents/MacOS</computeroutput>
                  folder.
                </para>
              </listitem>

              <listitem>
                <para>
                  On a Linux host, this file is in the
                  <computeroutput>additions</computeroutput> folder
                  where you installed &product-name;, usually
                  <computeroutput>/opt/VirtualBox/</computeroutput>.
                </para>
              </listitem>

              <listitem>
                <para>
                  On Oracle Solaris hosts, this file is in the
                  <computeroutput>additions</computeroutput> folder
                  where you installed &product-name;, usually
                  <computeroutput>/opt/VirtualBox</computeroutput>.
                </para>
              </listitem>

            </itemizedlist>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              In the Virtual Media Manager, select the ISO file and
              click <emphasis role="bold">Select</emphasis> button. This
              mounts the ISO file and presents it to your Windows guest
              as a CD-ROM.
            </para>
          </listitem>

        </orderedlist>

        <para>
          Unless you have the Autostart feature disabled in your Windows
          guest, Windows will now autostart the &product-name; Guest
          Additions installation program from the Additions ISO. If the
          Autostart feature has been turned off, choose
          <computeroutput>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe</computeroutput> from
          the CD/DVD drive inside the guest to start the installer.
        </para>

        <para>
          The installer will add several device drivers to the Windows
          driver database and then invoke the hardware detection wizard.
        </para>

        <para>
          Depending on your configuration, it might display warnings
          that the drivers are not digitally signed. You must confirm
          these in order to continue the installation and properly
          install the Additions.
        </para>

        <para>
          After installation, reboot your guest operating system to
          activate the Additions.
        </para>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="additions-windows-updating">

        <title>Updating the Windows Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          Windows Guest Additions can be updated by running the
          installation program again. This replaces the previous
          Additions drivers with updated versions.
        </para>

        <para>
          Alternatively, you can also open the Windows Device Manager
          and select <emphasis role="bold">Update Driver...</emphasis>
          for the following devices:
        </para>

        <orderedlist>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              &product-name; Graphics Adapter
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              &product-name; System Device
            </para>
          </listitem>

        </orderedlist>

        <para>
          For each, choose the option to provide your own driver, click
          <emphasis role="bold">Have Disk</emphasis> and navigate to the
          CD-ROM drive with the Guest Additions.
        </para>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="additions-windows-install-unattended">

        <title>Unattended Installation</title>

        <para>
          To avoid popups when performing an unattended installation of
          the &product-name; Guest Additions, the code signing
          certificates used to sign the drivers needs to be installed in
          the correct certificate stores on the guest operating system.
          Failure to do this will cause a typical Windows installation
          to display multiple dialogs asking whether you want to install
          a particular driver.
        </para>

        <note>
          <para>
            On some Windows versions, such as Windows 2000 and Windows
            XP, the user intervention popups mentioned above are always
            displayed, even after importing the Oracle certificates.
          </para>
        </note>

        <para>
          Installing the code signing certificates on a Windows guest
          can be done automatically. Use the
          <computeroutput>VBoxCertUtil.exe</computeroutput> utility from
          the <computeroutput>cert</computeroutput> folder on the Guest
          Additions installation CD.
        </para>

        <para>
          Use the following steps:
        </para>

        <orderedlist>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Log in as Administrator on the guest.
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Mount the &product-name; Guest Additions .ISO.
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Open a command line window on the guest and change to the
              <computeroutput>cert</computeroutput> folder on the
              &product-name; Guest Additions CD.
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Run the following command:
            </para>

<screen>VBoxCertUtil.exe add-trusted-publisher vbox*.cer --root vbox*.cer</screen>

            <para>
              This command installs the certificates to the certificate
              store. When installing the same certificate more than
              once, an appropriate error will be displayed.
            </para>
          </listitem>

        </orderedlist>

        <para>
          To allow for completely unattended guest installations, you
          can specify a command line parameter to the install launcher:
        </para>

<screen>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /S</screen>

        <para>
          This automatically installs the right files and drivers for
          the corresponding platform, either 32-bit or 64-bit.
        </para>

        <note>
          <para>
            By default on an unattended installation on a Vista or
            Windows 7 guest, there will be the XPDM graphics driver
            installed. This graphics driver does not support Windows
            Aero / Direct3D on the guest. Instead, the WDDM graphics
            driver needs to be installed. To select this driver by
            default, add the command line parameter
            <computeroutput>/with_wddm</computeroutput> when invoking
            the Windows Guest Additions installer. This is only required
            for Vista and Windows 7.
          </para>
        </note>

        <note>
          <para>
            For Windows Aero to run correctly on a guest, the guest's
            VRAM size needs to be configured to at least 128 MB.
          </para>
        </note>

        <para>
          For more options regarding unattended guest installations,
          consult the command line help by using the command:
        </para>

<screen>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /?</screen>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="windows-guest-file-extraction">

        <title>Manual File Extraction</title>

        <para>
          If you would like to install the files and drivers manually,
          you can extract the files from the Windows Guest Additions
          setup as follows:
        </para>

<screen>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /extract</screen>

        <para>
          To explicitly extract the Windows Guest Additions for another
          platform than the current running one, such as 64-bit files on
          a 32-bit system, you must use the appropriate platform
          installer. Use
          <computeroutput>VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe</computeroutput>
          or
          <computeroutput>VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe</computeroutput>
          with the <computeroutput>/extract</computeroutput> parameter.
        </para>

      </sect3>

    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="additions-linux">

      <title>Guest Additions for Linux</title>

      <para>
        Like the Windows Guest Additions, the &product-name; Guest
        Additions for Linux are a set of device drivers and system
        applications which may be installed in the guest operating
        system.
      </para>

      <para>
        The following Linux distributions are officially supported:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Oracle Linux as of version 5, including UEK kernels
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Fedora as of Fedora Core 4
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Redhat Enterprise Linux as of version 3
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            SUSE and openSUSE Linux as of version 9
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Ubuntu as of version 5.10
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        Many other distributions are known to work with the Guest
        Additions.
      </para>

      <para>
        The version of the Linux kernel supplied by default in SUSE and
        openSUSE 10.2, Ubuntu 6.10 (all versions) and Ubuntu 6.06
        (server edition) contains a bug which can cause it to crash
        during startup when it is run in a virtual machine. The Guest
        Additions work in those distributions.
      </para>

      <para>
        Note that some Linux distributions already come with all or part
        of the &product-name; Guest Additions. You may choose to keep
        the distribution's version of the Guest Additions but these are
        often not up to date and limited in functionality, so we
        recommend replacing them with the Guest Additions that come with
        &product-name;. The &product-name; Linux Guest Additions
        installer tries to detect an existing installation and replace
        them but depending on how the distribution integrates the Guest
        Additions, this may require some manual interaction. It is
        highly recommended to take a snapshot of the virtual machine
        before replacing preinstalled Guest Additions.
      </para>

      <sect3 id="additions-linux-install">

        <title>Installing the Linux Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          The &product-name; Guest Additions for Linux are provided on
          the same virtual CD-ROM file as the Guest Additions for
          Windows. See <xref linkend="mountingadditionsiso"/>. They also
          come with an installation program that guides you through the
          setup process. However, due to the significant differences
          between Linux distributions, installation may be slightly more
          complex when compared to Windows.
        </para>

        <para>
          Installation generally involves the following steps:
        </para>

        <orderedlist>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Before installing the Guest Additions, you prepare your
              guest system for building external kernel modules. This
              works as described in
              <xref linkend="externalkernelmodules" />, except that this
              step must be performed in your Linux
              <emphasis>guest</emphasis> instead of on a Linux host
              system.
            </para>

            <para>
              If you suspect that something has gone wrong, check that
              your guest is set up correctly and run the following
              command as root:
            </para>

<screen>rcvboxadd setup</screen>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Insert the
              <computeroutput>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</computeroutput> CD
              file into your Linux guest's virtual CD-ROM drive, as
              described for a Windows guest in
              <xref linkend="mountingadditionsiso" />.
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted
              and run the following command as root:
            </para>

<screen>sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run</screen>
          </listitem>

        </orderedlist>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="additions-linux-graphics-mouse">

        <title>Graphics and Mouse Integration</title>

        <para>
          In Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, &product-name; graphics
          and mouse integration goes through the X Window System.
          &product-name; can use the X.Org variant of the system, or
          XFree86 version 4.3 which is identical to the first X.Org
          release. During the installation process, the X.Org display
          server will be set up to use the graphics and mouse drivers
          which come with the Guest Additions.
        </para>

        <para>
          After installing the Guest Additions into a fresh installation
          of a supported Linux distribution or Oracle Solaris system,
          many unsupported systems will work correctly too, the guest's
          graphics mode will change to fit the size of the
          &product-name; window on the host when it is resized. You can
          also ask the guest system to switch to a particular resolution
          by sending a video mode hint using the
          <command>VBoxManage</command> tool.
        </para>

        <para>
          Multiple guest monitors are supported in guests using the
          X.Org server version 1.3, which is part of release 7.3 of the
          X Window System version 11, or a later version. The layout of
          the guest screens can be adjusted as needed using the tools
          which come with the guest operating system.
        </para>

        <para>
          If you want to understand more about the details of how the
          X.Org drivers are set up, in particular if you wish to use
          them in a setting which our installer does not handle
          correctly, see <xref linkend="guestxorgsetup" />.
        </para>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="additions-linux-updating">

        <title>Updating the Linux Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          The Guest Additions can simply be updated by going through the
          installation procedure again with an updated CD-ROM image.
          This will replace the drivers with updated versions. You
          should reboot after updating the Guest Additions.
        </para>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="additions-linux-uninstall">

        <title>Uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          If you have a version of the Guest Additions installed on your
          virtual machine and wish to remove it without installing new
          ones, you can do so by inserting the Guest Additions CD image
          into the virtual CD-ROM drive as described above. Then run the
          installer for the current Guest Additions with the
          <computeroutput>uninstall</computeroutput> parameter from the
          path that the CD image is mounted on in the guest, as follows:
        </para>

<screen>sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall</screen>

        <para>
          While this will normally work without issues, you may need to
          do some manual cleanup of the guest in some cases, especially
          of the XFree86Config or xorg.conf file. In particular, if the
          Additions version installed or the guest operating system were
          very old, or if you made your own changes to the Guest
          Additions setup after you installed them.
        </para>

        <para>
          You can uninstall the Additions as follows:
        </para>

<screen>/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-<replaceable>version</replaceable>/uninstall.sh</screen>

        <para>
          Replace
          <computeroutput>/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-<replaceable>version</replaceable></computeroutput>
          with the correct Guest Additions installation directory.
        </para>

      </sect3>

    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="additions-solaris">

      <title>Guest Additions for Oracle Solaris</title>

      <para>
        Like the Windows Guest Additions, the &product-name; Guest
        Additions for Oracle Solaris take the form of a set of device
        drivers and system applications which may be installed in the
        guest operating system.
      </para>

      <para>
        The following Oracle Solaris distributions are officially
        supported:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Oracle Solaris 11, including Oracle Solaris 11 Express
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Oracle Solaris 10 4/08 and later
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        Other distributions may work if they are based on comparable
        software releases.
      </para>

      <sect3 id="additions-solaris-install">

        <title>Installing the Oracle Solaris Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          The &product-name; Guest Additions for Oracle Solaris are
          provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as the Additions for Windows
          and Linux. They come with an installation program that guides
          you through the setup process.
        </para>

        <para>
          Installation involves the following steps:
        </para>

        <orderedlist>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Mount the
              <computeroutput>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</computeroutput>
              file as your Oracle Solaris guest's virtual CD-ROM drive,
              exactly the same way as described for a Windows guest in
              <xref
            linkend="mountingadditionsiso" />.
            </para>

            <para>
              If the CD-ROM drive on the guest does not get mounted, as
              seen with some versions of Oracle Solaris 10, run the
              following command as root:
            </para>

<screen>svcadm restart volfs</screen>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted
              and run the following command as root:
            </para>

<screen>pkgadd -G -d ./VBoxSolarisAdditions.pkg</screen>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Choose <emphasis role="bold">1</emphasis> and confirm
              installation of the Guest Additions package. After the
              installation is complete, log out and log in to X server
              on your guest, to activate the X11 Guest Additions.
            </para>
          </listitem>

        </orderedlist>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="additions-solaris-uninstall">

        <title>Uninstalling the Oracle Solaris Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          The Oracle Solaris Guest Additions can be safely removed by
          removing the package from the guest. Open a root terminal
          session and run the following command:
        </para>

<screen>pkgrm SUNWvboxguest</screen>

      </sect3>

      <sect3 id="additions-solaris-updating">

        <title>Updating the Oracle Solaris Guest Additions</title>

        <para>
          The Guest Additions should be updated by first uninstalling
          the existing Guest Additions and then installing the new ones.
          Attempting to install new Guest Additions without removing the
          existing ones is not possible.
        </para>

      </sect3>

    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="additions-os2">

      <title>Guest Additions for OS/2</title>

      <para>
        &product-name; also ships with a set of drivers that improve
        running OS/2 in a virtual machine. Due to restrictions of OS/2
        itself, this variant of the Guest Additions has a limited
        feature set. See <xref
      linkend="KnownIssues" /> for
        details.
      </para>

      <para>
        The OS/2 Guest Additions are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as
        those for the other platforms. Mount the ISO in OS/2 as
        described previously. The OS/2 Guest Additions are located in
        the directory <computeroutput>\OS2</computeroutput>.
      </para>

      <para>
        We do not provide an automatic installer at this time. See the
        <computeroutput>readme.txt</computeroutput> file in the CD-ROM
        directory, which describes how to install the OS/2 Guest
        Additions manually.
      </para>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="sharedfolders">

    <title>Shared Folders</title>

    <para>
      With the <emphasis>shared folders</emphasis> feature of
      &product-name;, you can access files of your host system from
      within the guest system. This is similar to how you would use
      network shares in Windows networks, except that shared folders do
      not require networking, only the Guest Additions. Shared folders
      are supported with Windows 2000 or later, Linux, and Oracle
      Solaris guests. &product-name; release 6.0 includes experimental
      support for Mac OS X and OS/2 guests.
    </para>

    <para>
      Shared folders physically reside on the <emphasis>host</emphasis>
      and are then shared with the guest, which uses a special file
      system driver in the Guest Additions to talk to the host. For
      Windows guests, shared folders are implemented as a pseudo-network
      redirector. For Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, the Guest
      Additions provide a virtual file system.
    </para>

    <para>
      To share a host folder with a virtual machine in &product-name;,
      you must specify the path of the folder and choose a
      <emphasis>share name</emphasis> that the guest can use to access
      the shared folder. This happens on the host. In the guest you can
      then use the share name to connect to it and access files.
    </para>

    <para>
      There are several ways in which shared folders can be set up for a
      virtual machine:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          In the window of a running VM, you select
          <emphasis role="bold">Shared Folders</emphasis> from the
          <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu, or click on the
          folder icon on the status bar in the bottom right corner.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          If a VM is not currently running, you can configure shared
          folders in the virtual machine's
          <emphasis role="bold">Settings</emphasis> dialog.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          From the command line, you can create shared folders using
          <command>VBoxManage</command>, as follows:
        </para>

<screen>VBoxManage sharedfolder add "VM name" --name "sharename" --hostpath "C:\test"</screen>

        <para>
          See <xref linkend="vboxmanage-sharedfolder" />.
        </para>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <para>
      There are two types of shares:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          Permanent shares, that are saved with the VM settings.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          Transient shares, that are added at runtime and disappear when
          the VM is powered off. These can be created using a checkbox
          in the VirtualBox Manager, or by using the
          <computeroutput>--transient</computeroutput> option of the
          <command>VBoxManage sharedfolder add</command> command.
        </para>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <para>
      Shared folders can either be read-write or read-only. This means
      that the guest is either allowed to both read and write, or just
      read files on the host. By default, shared folders are read-write.
      Read-only folders can be created using a checkbox in the
      VirtualBox Manager, or with the
      <computeroutput>--readonly</computeroutput> option of the
      <command>VBoxManage sharedfolder add</command> command.
    </para>

    <para>
      &product-name; shared folders also support symbolic links, also
      called <emphasis>symlinks</emphasis>, under the following
      conditions:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          The host operating system must support symlinks. For example,
          a Mac OS X, Linux, or Oracle Solaris host is required.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          Currently only Linux and Oracle Solaris Guest Additions
          support symlinks.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          For security reasons the guest OS is not allowed to create
          symlinks by default. If you trust the guest OS to not abuse
          the functionality, you can enable creation of symlinks for a
          shared folder as follows:
        </para>

<screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/<replaceable>sharename</replaceable> 1</screen>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <sect2 id="sf_mount_manual">

      <title>Manual Mounting</title>

      <para>
        You can mount the shared folder from inside a VM, in the same
        way as you would mount an ordinary network share:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            In a Windows guest, shared folders are browseable and
            therefore visible in Windows Explorer. To attach the host's
            shared folder to your Windows guest, open Windows Explorer
            and look for the folder in <emphasis role="bold">My
            Networking Place</emphasis>s, <emphasis role="bold">Entire
            Network</emphasis>, <emphasis role="bold">&product-name;
            Shared Folders</emphasis>. By right-clicking on a shared
            folder and selecting <emphasis role="bold">Map Network
            Drive</emphasis> from the menu that pops up, you can assign
            a drive letter to that shared folder.
          </para>

          <para>
            Alternatively, on the Windows command line, use the
            following command:
          </para>

<screen>net use x: \\vboxsvr\sharename</screen>

          <para>
            While <computeroutput>vboxsvr</computeroutput> is a fixed
            name, note that <computeroutput>vboxsrv</computeroutput>
            would also work, replace <replaceable>x:</replaceable> with
            the drive letter that you want to use for the share, and
            <replaceable>sharename</replaceable> with the share name
            specified with <command>VBoxManage</command>.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            In a Linux guest, use the following command:
          </para>

<screen>mount -t vboxsf [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint</screen>

          <para>
            To mount a shared folder during boot, add the following
            entry to <computeroutput>/etc/fstab</computeroutput>:
          </para>

<screen>sharename   mountpoint   vboxsf   defaults  0   0</screen>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            In a Oracle Solaris guest, use the following command:
          </para>

<screen>mount -F vboxfs [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint</screen>

          <para>
            Replace <replaceable>sharename</replaceable>, use a
            lowercase string, with the share name specified with
            <command>VBoxManage</command> or the GUI. Replace
            <replaceable>mountpoint</replaceable> with the path where
            you want the share to be mounted on the guest, such as
            <computeroutput>/mnt/share</computeroutput>. The usual mount
            rules apply. For example, create this directory first if it
            does not exist yet.
          </para>

          <para>
            Here is an example of mounting the shared folder for the
            user jack on Oracle Solaris:
          </para>

<screen>$ id
uid=5000(jack) gid=1(other)
$ mkdir /export/home/jack/mount
$ pfexec mount -F vboxfs -o uid=5000,gid=1 jackshare /export/home/jack/mount
$ cd ~/mount
$ ls
sharedfile1.mp3 sharedfile2.txt
$</screen>

          <para>
            Beyond the standard options supplied by the
            <command>mount</command> command, the following are
            available:
          </para>

<screen>iocharset CHARSET</screen>

          <para>
            This option sets the character set used for I/O operations.
            Note that on Linux guests, if the
            <computeroutput>iocharset</computeroutput> option is not
            specified, then the Guest Additions driver will attempt to
            use the character set specified by the CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT
            kernel option. If this option is not set either, then UTF-8
            is used.
          </para>

<screen>convertcp CHARSET</screen>

          <para>
            This option specifies the character set used for the shared
            folder name. This is UTF-8 by default.
          </para>

          <para>
            The generic mount options, documented in the
            <computeroutput>mount</computeroutput> manual page, apply
            also. Especially useful are the options
            <computeroutput>uid</computeroutput>,
            <computeroutput>gid</computeroutput> and
            <computeroutput>mode</computeroutput>, as they can allow
            access by normal users in read/write mode, depending on the
            settings, even if root has mounted the filesystem.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            In an OS/2 guest, use the <command>VBoxControl</command>
            command to manage shared folders. For example:
          </para>

<screen>VBoxControl sharedfolder use D: MyShareName
VBoxControl sharedfolder unuse D:
VBoxControl sharedfolder list</screen>

          <para>
            As with Windows guests, shared folders can also be accessed
            via UNC using <computeroutput>\\VBoxSF\</computeroutput>,
            <computeroutput>\\VBoxSvr\</computeroutput> or
            <computeroutput>\\VBoxSrv\</computeroutput> as the server
            name and the shared folder name as
            <replaceable>sharename</replaceable>.
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="sf_mount_auto">

      <title>Automatic Mounting</title>

      <para>
        &product-name; provides the option to mount shared folders
        automatically. When automatic mounting is enabled for a shared
        folder, the Guest Additions service will mount it for you
        automatically. For Windows or OS/2, a preferred drive letter can
        also be specified. For Linux or Oracle Solaris, a mount point
        directory can also be specified.
      </para>

      <para>
        If a drive letter or mount point is not specified, or is in use
        already, an alternative location is found by the Guest Additions
        service. The service searches for an alternative location
        depending on the guest OS, as follows:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            <emphasis role="bold">Windows and OS/2 guests.</emphasis>
            Search for a free drive letter, starting at
            <computeroutput>Z:</computeroutput>. If all drive letters
            are assigned, the folder is not mounted.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            <emphasis role="bold">Linux and Oracle Solaris
            guests.</emphasis> Folders are mounted under the
            <computeroutput>/media</computeroutput> directory. The
            folder name is normalized (no spaces, slashes or colons) and
            is prefixed with <computeroutput>sf_</computeroutput>.
          </para>

          <para>
            For example, if you have a shared folder called
            <computeroutput>myfiles</computeroutput>, it will appear as
            <computeroutput>/media/sf_myfiles</computeroutput> in the
            guest.
          </para>

          <para>
            The guest properties
            <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir</computeroutput>
            and the more generic
            <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix</computeroutput>
            can be used to override the automatic mount directory and
            prefix. See <xref linkend="guestadd-guestprops" />.
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        Access to an automatically mounted shared folder is granted to
        everyone in a Windows guest, including the guest user. For Linux
        and Oracle Solaris guests, access is restricted to members of
        the group <computeroutput>vboxsf</computeroutput> and the
        <computeroutput>root</computeroutput> user.
      </para>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-dnd">

    <title>Drag and Drop</title>

    <para>
      &product-name; enables you to drag and drop content from the host
      to the guest, and vice versa. For this to work the latest Guest
      Additions must be installed on the guest.
    </para>

    <para>
      Drag and drop transparently allows copying or opening files,
      directories, and even certain clipboard formats from one end to
      the other. For example, from the host to the guest or from the
      guest to the host. You then can perform drag and drop operations
      between the host and a VM, as it would be a native drag and drop
      operation on the host OS.
    </para>

    <para>
      At the moment drag and drop is implemented for Windows-based and
      X-Windows-based systems, both on the host and guest side. As
      X-Windows supports many different drag and drop protocols only the
      most common one, XDND, is supported for now. Applications using
      other protocols, such as Motif or OffiX, will not be recognized by
      &product-name;.
    </para>

    <para>
      In the context of using drag and drop, the origin of the data is
      called the <emphasis>source</emphasis>. That is, where the actual
      data comes from and is specified. The <emphasis>target</emphasis>
      specifies where the data from the source should go to.
      Transferring data from the source to the target can be done in
      various ways, such as copying, moving, or linking.
    </para>

    <note>
      <para>
        At the moment only copying of data is supported. Moving or
        linking is not yet implemented.
      </para>
    </note>

    <para>
      When transferring data from the host to the guest OS, the host in
      this case is the source, whereas the guest OS is the target.
      However, when transferring data from the guest OS to the host, the
      guest OS this time became the source and the host is the target.
    </para>

    <para>
      For security reasons drag and drop can be configured at runtime on
      a per-VM basis either using the <emphasis role="bold">Drag and
      Drop</emphasis> menu item in the
      <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu of the virtual
      machine, as shown below, or the <command>VBoxManage</command>
      command.
    </para>

    <figure id="fig-drag-drop-options">
      <title>Drag and Drop Menu Options</title>
      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/dnd-modes.png"
                   width="10cm" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>
    </figure>

    <para>
      The following drag and drop modes are available:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Disabled.</emphasis> Disables the drag
          and drop feature entirely. This is the default when creating a
          new VM.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Host To Guest.</emphasis> Enables drag
          and drop operations from the host to the guest only.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Guest To Host.</emphasis> Enables drag
          and drop operations from the guest to the host only.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          <emphasis role="bold">Bidirectional.</emphasis> Enables drag
          and drop operations in both directions: from the host to the
          guest, and from the guest to the host.
        </para>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <note>
      <para>
        Drag and drop support depends on the frontend being used. At the
        moment, only the VirtualBox Manager frontend provides this
        functionality.
      </para>
    </note>

    <para>
      To use the <command>VBoxManage</command> command to control the
      current drag and drop mode, see <xref linkend="vboxmanage" />. The
      <command>modifyvm</command> and <command>controlvm</command>
      commands enable setting of a VM's current drag and drop mode from
      the command line.
    </para>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-dnd-formats">

      <title>Supported Formats</title>

      <para>
        As &product-name; can run on a variety of host operating systems
        and also supports a wide range of guests, certain data formats
        must be translated after transfer. This is so that the target
        operating system, which receiving the data, is able to handle
        them in an appropriate manner.
      </para>

      <note>
        <para>
          When dragging files no data conversion is done in any way. For
          example, when transferring a file from a Linux guest to a
          Windows host the Linux-specific line endings are not converted
          to Windows line endings.
        </para>
      </note>

      <para>
        The following formats are handled by the &product-name; drag and
        drop service:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            <emphasis role="bold">Plain text:</emphasis> From
            applications such as text editors, internet browsers and
            terminal windows.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            <emphasis role="bold">Files:</emphasis> From file managers
            such as Windows Explorer, Nautilus, and Finder.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            <emphasis role="bold">Directories:</emphasis> For
            directories, the same formats apply as for files.
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-dnd-limitations">

      <title>Known Limitations</title>

      <para>
        The following limitations are known for drag and drop:
      </para>

      <para>
        On Windows hosts, dragging and dropping content between
        UAC-elevated (User Account Control) programs and
        non-UAC-elevated programs is not allowed. If you start
        &product-name; with Administrator privileges then drag and drop
        will not work with Windows Explorer, which runs with regular
        user privileges by default.
      </para>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-video">

    <title>Hardware-Accelerated Graphics</title>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-3d">

      <title>Hardware 3D Acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9)</title>

      <para>
        The &product-name; Guest Additions contain experimental hardware
        3D support for Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests.
      </para>

      <para>
        With this feature, if an application inside your virtual machine
        uses 3D features through the OpenGL or Direct3D 8/9 programming
        interfaces, instead of emulating them in software, which would
        be slow, &product-name; will attempt to use your host's 3D
        hardware. This works for all supported host platforms, provided
        that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated
        3D hardware in the first place.
      </para>

      <para>
        The 3D acceleration feature currently has the following
        preconditions:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            It is only available for certain Windows, Linux, and Oracle
            Solaris guests. In particular:
          </para>

          <itemizedlist>

            <listitem>
              <para>
                3D acceleration with Windows guests requires Windows
                2000, Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. Apart from on
                Windows 2000 guests, both OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9 are
                supported on an experimental basis.
              </para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>
                OpenGL on Linux requires kernel 2.6.27 or later, as well
                as X.org server version 1.5 or later. Ubuntu 10.10 and
                Fedora 14 have been tested and confirmed as working.
              </para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>
                OpenGL on Oracle Solaris guests requires X.org server
                version 1.5 or later.
              </para>
            </listitem>

          </itemizedlist>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            The Guest Additions must be installed.
          </para>

          <note>
            <para>
              For the basic Direct3D acceleration to work in a Windows
              Guest, &product-name; needs to replace Windows system
              files in the virtual machine. As a result, the Guest
              Additions installation program offers Direct3D
              acceleration as an option that must be explicitly enabled.
              Also, you must install the Guest Additions in Safe Mode.
              This does <emphasis>not</emphasis> apply to the WDDM
              Direct3D video driver available for Windows Vista and
              later. See <xref linkend="KnownIssues" /> for details.
            </para>
          </note>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Because 3D support is still experimental at this time, it is
            disabled by default and must be <emphasis>manually
            enabled</emphasis> in the VM settings. See
            <xref linkend="settings-display" />.
          </para>

          <note>
            <para>
              Untrusted guest systems should not be allowed to use the
              3D acceleration features of &product-name;, just as
              untrusted host software should not be allowed to use 3D
              acceleration. Drivers for 3D hardware are generally too
              complex to be made properly secure and any software which
              is allowed to access them may be able to compromise the
              operating system running them. In addition, enabling 3D
              acceleration gives the guest direct access to a large body
              of additional program code in the &product-name; host
              process which it might conceivably be able to use to crash
              the virtual machine.
            </para>
          </note>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        To enable Aero theme support, the &product-name; WDDM video
        driver must be installed, which is available with the Guest
        Additions installation. The WDDM driver is not installed by
        default for Vista and Windows 7 guest and must be
        <emphasis>manually selected</emphasis> in the Guest Additions
        installer by clicking <emphasis role="bold">No</emphasis> in the
        <emphasis role="bold">Would You Like to Install Basic Direct3D
        Support</emphasis> dialog displayed when the Direct3D feature is
        selected.
      </para>

      <para>
        The Aero theme is not enabled by default. To enable it, do the
        following:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            <emphasis role="bold">Windows Vista guests:</emphasis>
            Right-click on the desktop and select
            <emphasis role="bold">Personalize</emphasis>, then select
            <emphasis role="bold">Windows Color and
            Appearance</emphasis> in the
            <emphasis role="bold">Personalization</emphasis> window. In
            the <emphasis role="bold">Appearance Settings</emphasis>
            dialog, select <emphasis role="bold">Windows Aero</emphasis>
            and click <emphasis role="bold">OK</emphasis>.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            <emphasis role="bold">Windows 7 guests:</emphasis>
            Right-click on the desktop and select
            <emphasis role="bold">Personalize</emphasis>. Select any
            Aero theme in the
            <emphasis role="bold">Personalization</emphasis> window.
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        Technically, &product-name; implements this by installing an
        additional hardware 3D driver inside your guest when the Guest
        Additions are installed. This driver acts as a hardware 3D
        driver and reports to the guest operating system that the
        virtual hardware is capable of 3D hardware acceleration. When an
        application in the guest then requests hardware acceleration
        through the OpenGL or Direct3D programming interfaces, these are
        sent to the host through a special communication tunnel
        implemented by &product-name;, and then the
        <emphasis>host</emphasis> performs the requested 3D operation
        using the host's programming interfaces.
      </para>

    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-2d">

      <title>Hardware 2D Video Acceleration for Windows Guests</title>

      <para>
        The &product-name; Guest Additions contain experimental hardware
        2D video acceleration support for Windows guests.
      </para>

      <para>
        With this feature, if an application such as a video player
        inside your Windows VM uses 2D video overlays to play a movie
        clip, then &product-name; will attempt to use your host's video
        acceleration hardware instead of performing overlay stretching
        and color conversion in software, which would be slow. This
        currently works for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X host platforms,
        provided that your host operating system can make use of 2D
        video acceleration in the first place.
      </para>

      <para>
        Hardware 2D video acceleration currently has the following
        preconditions:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Only available for Windows guests, running Windows XP or
            later.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Guest Additions must be installed.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Because 2D support is still experimental at this time, it is
            disabled by default and must be <emphasis>manually
            enabled</emphasis> in the VM settings. See
            <xref linkend="settings-display" />.
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        Technically, &product-name; implements this by exposing video
        overlay DirectDraw capabilities in the Guest Additions video
        driver. The driver sends all overlay commands to the host
        through a special communication tunnel implemented by
        &product-name;. On the host side, OpenGL is then used to
        implement color space transformation and scaling
      </para>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="seamlesswindows">

    <title>Seamless Windows</title>

    <para>
      With the <emphasis>seamless windows</emphasis> feature of
      &product-name;, you can have the windows that are displayed within
      a virtual machine appear side by side next to the windows of your
      host. This feature is supported for the following guest operating
      systems, provided that the Guest Additions are installed:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          Windows guests. Support was added in &product-name; 1.5.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          Supported Linux or Oracle Solaris guests running the X Window
          System. Support was added with &product-name; 1.6.
        </para>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <para>
      After seamless windows are enabled, &product-name; suppresses the
      display of the desktop background of your guest, allowing you to
      run the windows of your guest operating system seamlessly next to
      the windows of your host.
    </para>

    <figure id="fig-seamless-windows">
      <title>Seamless Windows on a Host Desktop</title>
      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/seamless.png" width="14cm" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>
    </figure>

    <para>
      To enable seamless mode, after starting the virtual machine, press
      the <emphasis role="bold">Host key + L</emphasis>. The Host key is
      normally the right control key. This will enlarge the size of the
      VM's display to the size of your host screen and mask out the
      guest operating system's background. To disable seamless windows
      and go back to the normal VM display, press the Host key + L
      again.
    </para>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-guestprops">

    <title>Guest Properties</title>

    <para>
      &product-name; enables requests of some properties from a running
      guest, provided that the &product-name; Guest Additions are
      installed and the VM is running. This provides the following
      advantages:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          A number of predefined VM characteristics are automatically
          maintained by &product-name; and can be retrieved on the host.
          For example, to monitor VM performance and statistics.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          Arbitrary string data can be exchanged between guest and host.
          This works in both directions.
        </para>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <para>
      To accomplish this, &product-name; establishes a private
      communication channel between the &product-name; Guest Additions
      and the host, and software on both sides can use this channel to
      exchange string data for arbitrary purposes. Guest properties are
      simply string keys to which a value is attached. They can be set,
      or written to, by either the host and the guest. They can also be
      read from both sides.
    </para>

    <para>
      In addition to establishing the general mechanism of reading and
      writing values, a set of predefined guest properties is
      automatically maintained by the &product-name; Guest Additions to
      allow for retrieving interesting guest data such as the guest's
      exact operating system and service pack level, the installed
      version of the Guest Additions, users that are currently logged
      into the guest OS, network statistics and more. These predefined
      properties are all prefixed with
      <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/</computeroutput> and organized into a
      hierarchical tree of keys.
    </para>

    <para>
      Some of this runtime information is shown when you select
      <emphasis role="bold">Session Information Dialog</emphasis> from a
      virtual machine's <emphasis role="bold">Machine</emphasis> menu.
    </para>

    <para>
      A more flexible way to use this channel is with the
      <command>VBoxManage guestproperty</command> command. See
      <xref linkend="vboxmanage-guestproperty" />. For example, to have
      <emphasis>all</emphasis> the available guest properties for a
      given running VM listed with their respective values, use this
      command:
    </para>

<screen>$ VBoxManage guestproperty enumerate "Windows Vista III"
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>
(C) 2005-2018 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.

Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product, value: Windows Vista Business Edition,
    timestamp: 1229098278843087000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Release, value: 6.0.6001,
    timestamp: 1229098278950553000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/ServicePack, value: 1,
    timestamp: 1229098279122627000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/InstallDir,
    value: C:/Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox
    Guest Additions, timestamp: 1229098279269739000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Revision, value: 40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279345664000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Version, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>,
    timestamp: 1229098279479515000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxControl.exe, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279651731000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxHook.dll, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279804835000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxDisp.dll, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279880611000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMRXNP.dll, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279882618000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxService.exe, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279883195000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxTray.exe, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279885027000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxGuest.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279886838000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMouse.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279890600000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxSF.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279893056000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxVideo.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
    timestamp: 1229098279895767000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsers, value: 1,
    timestamp: 1229099826317660000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/NoLoggedInUsers, value: false,
    timestamp: 1229098455580553000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/Count, value: 1,
    timestamp: 1229099826299785000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/HostInfo/GUI/LanguageID, value: C,
    timestamp: 1229098151272771000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP, value: 192.168.2.102,
    timestamp: 1229099826300088000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Broadcast, value: 255.255.255.255,
    timestamp: 1229099826300220000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Netmask, value: 255.255.255.0,
    timestamp: 1229099826300350000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/Status, value: Up,
    timestamp: 1229099826300524000, flags:
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsersList, value: username,
    timestamp: 1229099826317386000, flags:</screen>

    <para>
      To query the value of a single property, use the
      <computeroutput>get</computeroutput> subcommand as follows:
    </para>

<screen>$ VBoxManage guestproperty get "Windows Vista III" "/VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product"
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>
(C) 2005-2018 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.

Value: Windows Vista Business Edition</screen>

    <para>
      To add or change guest properties from the guest, use the tool
      <computeroutput>VBoxControl</computeroutput>. This tool is
      included in the Guest Additions of &product-name; 2.2 or later.
      When started from a Linux guest, this tool requires root
      privileges for security reasons:
    </para>

<screen>$ sudo VBoxControl guestproperty enumerate
VirtualBox Guest Additions Command Line Management Interface Version <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>
(C) 2005-2018 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.

Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Release, value: 2.6.28-18-generic,
    timestamp: 1265813265835667000, flags: &lt;NULL&gt;
Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Version, value: #59-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 28 01:23:03 UTC 2010,
    timestamp: 1265813265836305000, flags: &lt;NULL&gt;
      ...</screen>

    <para>
      For more complex needs, you can use the &product-name; programming
      interfaces. See <xref linkend="VirtualBoxAPI" />.
    </para>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-guestprops-waits">

      <title>Using Guest Properties to Wait on VM Events</title>

      <para>
        The properties
        <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVer</computeroutput>,
        <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVerExt</computeroutput>
        or <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxRev</computeroutput>
        can be waited on to detect that the VM state was restored from
        saved state or snapshot:
      </para>

<screen>$ VBoxControl guestproperty wait /VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVer</screen>

      <para>
        Similarly the
        <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/ResumeCounter</computeroutput>
        can be used to detect that a VM was resumed from the paused
        state or saved state.
      </para>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-gc-file-manager">

    <title>Guest Control File Manager</title>

    <para>
      The Guest Control File Manager is a feature of the Guest Additions
      that enables easy copying and moving of files between a guest and
      the host system. Other file management operations provide support
      to create new folders and to rename or delete files.
    </para>

    <figure id="fig-guest-control-fm">
      <title>Guest Control File Manager</title>
      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/guest-fm.png"
            width="12cm" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>
    </figure>

    <para>
      The Guest Control File Manager works by mounting the host file
      system. Guest users must authenticate and create a guest session
      before they can transfer files.
    </para>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-gc-file-manager-using">

      <title>Using the Guest Control File Manager</title>

      <para>
        The following steps describe how to use the Guest Control File
        Manager.
      </para>

      <orderedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Open the Guest Control File Manager.
          </para>

          <para>
            In the guest VM, select
            <emphasis role="bold">Machine</emphasis>,
            <emphasis role="bold">File Manager</emphasis>.
          </para>

          <para>
            The left pane shows the files on the host system.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Create a guest session.
          </para>

          <para>
            At the bottom of the Guest Control File Manager, enter
            authentication credentials for a user on the guest system.
          </para>

          <para>
            Click <emphasis role="bold">Create Session</emphasis>.
          </para>

          <para>
            The contents of the guest VM file system appears in the
            right pane of the Guest Control File Manager.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Transfer files between the guest and the host system by
            using the move and copy file transfer icons.
          </para>

          <para>
            You can copy and move files from a guest to the host system
            or from the host system to the guest.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Close the Guest Control File Manager.
          </para>

          <para>
            Click <emphasis role="bold">Close</emphasis> to end the
            guest session.
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </orderedlist>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-guestcontrol">

    <title>Guest Control of Applications</title>

    <para>
      The Guest Additions enable starting of applications inside a VM
      from the host system.
    </para>

    <para>
      For this to work, the application needs to be installed inside the
      guest. No additional software needs to be installed on the host.
      Additionally, text mode output to stdout and stderr can be shown
      on the host for further processing. There are options to specify
      user credentials and a timeout value, in milliseconds, to limit
      the time the application is able to run.
    </para>

    <para>
      This feature can be used to automate deployment of software within
      the guest.
    </para>

    <para>
      The Guest Additions for Windows allow for automatic updating. This
      applies for already installed Guest Additions version 4.0 or
      later. Also, copying files from host to the guest as well as
      remotely creating guest directories is available.
    </para>

    <para>
      To use these features, use the &product-name; command line. See
      <xref linkend="vboxmanage-guestcontrol" />.
    </para>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="guestadd-memory-usage">

    <title>Memory Overcommitment</title>

    <para>
      In server environments with many VMs, the Guest Additions can be
      used to share physical host memory between several VMs. This
      reduces the total amount of memory in use by the VMs. If memory
      usage is the limiting factor and CPU resources are still
      available, this can help with running more VMs on each host.
    </para>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-balloon">

      <title>Memory Ballooning</title>

      <para>
        The Guest Additions can change the amount of host memory that a
        VM uses, while the machine is running. Because of how this is
        implemented, this feature is called <emphasis>memory
        ballooning</emphasis>.
      </para>

      <note>
        <itemizedlist>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              &product-name; supports memory ballooning only on 64-bit
              hosts. It is not supported on Mac OS X hosts.
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>
              Memory ballooning does not work with large pages enabled.
              To turn off large pages support for a VM, run
              <computeroutput>VBoxManage modifyvm &lt;VM name&gt;
              --largepages off</computeroutput>
            </para>
          </listitem>

        </itemizedlist>
      </note>

      <para>
        Normally, to change the amount of memory allocated to a virtual
        machine, you have to shut down the virtual machine entirely and
        modify its settings. With memory ballooning, memory that was
        allocated for a virtual machine can be given to another virtual
        machine without having to shut the machine down.
      </para>

      <para>
        When memory ballooning is requested, the &product-name; Guest
        Additions, which run inside the guest, allocate physical memory
        from the guest operating system on the kernel level and lock
        this memory down in the guest. This ensures that the guest will
        not use that memory any longer. No guest applications can
        allocate it, and the guest kernel will not use it either.
        &product-name; can then reuse this memory and give it to another
        virtual machine.
      </para>

      <para>
        The memory made available through the ballooning mechanism is
        only available for reuse by &product-name;. It is
        <emphasis>not</emphasis> returned as free memory to the host.
        Requesting balloon memory from a running guest will therefore
        not increase the amount of free, unallocated memory on the host.
        Effectively, memory ballooning is therefore a memory
        overcommitment mechanism for multiple virtual machines while
        they are running. This can be useful to temporarily start
        another machine, or in more complicated environments, for
        sophisticated memory management of many virtual machines that
        may be running in parallel depending on how memory is used by
        the guests.
      </para>

      <para>
        At this time, memory ballooning is only supported through
        <command>VBoxManage</command>. Use the following command to
        increase or decrease the size of the memory balloon within a
        running virtual machine that has Guest Additions installed:
      </para>

<screen>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" guestmemoryballoon n</screen>

      <para>
        where <replaceable>VM name</replaceable> is the name or UUID of
        the virtual machine in question and <replaceable>n</replaceable>
        is the amount of memory to allocate from the guest in megabytes.
        See <xref
      linkend="vboxmanage-controlvm" />.
      </para>

      <para>
        You can also set a default balloon that will automatically be
        requested from the VM every time after it has started up with
        the following command:
      </para>

<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --guestmemoryballoon n</screen>

      <para>
        By default, no balloon memory is allocated. This is a VM
        setting, like other <computeroutput>modifyvm</computeroutput>
        settings, and therefore can only be set while the machine is
        shut down. See <xref
      linkend="vboxmanage-modifyvm" />.
      </para>

    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="guestadd-pagefusion">

      <title>Page Fusion</title>

      <para>
        Whereas memory ballooning simply reduces the amount of RAM that
        is available to a VM, Page Fusion works differently. It avoids
        memory duplication between several similar running VMs.
      </para>

      <para>
        In a server environment running several similar VMs on the same
        host, lots of memory pages are identical. For example, if the
        VMs are using identical operating systems. &product-name;'s Page
        Fusion technology can efficiently identify these identical
        memory pages and share them between multiple VMs.
      </para>

      <note>
        <para>
          &product-name; supports Page Fusion only on 64-bit hosts, and
          it is not supported on Mac OS X hosts. Page Fusion currently
          works only with Windows 2000 and later guests.
        </para>
      </note>

      <para>
        The more similar the VMs on a given host are, the more
        efficiently Page Fusion can reduce the amount of host memory
        that is in use. It therefore works best if all VMs on a host run
        identical operating systems, such as Windows XP Service Pack 2.
        Instead of having a complete copy of each operating system in
        each VM, Page Fusion identifies the identical memory pages in
        use by these operating systems and eliminates the duplicates,
        sharing host memory between several machines. This is called
        <emphasis>deduplication</emphasis>. If a VM tries to modify a
        page that has been shared with other VMs, a new page is
        allocated again for that VM with a copy of the shared page. This
        is called <emphasis>copy on write</emphasis>. All this is fully
        transparent to the virtual machine.
      </para>

      <para>
        You may be familiar with this kind of memory overcommitment from
        other hypervisor products, which call this feature
        <emphasis>page sharing</emphasis> or <emphasis>same page
        merging</emphasis>. However, Page Fusion differs significantly
        from those other solutions, whose approaches have several
        drawbacks:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Traditional hypervisors scan <emphasis>all</emphasis> guest
            memory and compute checksums, also called hashes, for every
            single memory page. Then, they look for pages with identical
            hashes and compare the entire content of those pages. If two
            pages produce the same hash, it is very likely that the
            pages are identical in content. This process can take rather
            long, especially if the system is not idling. As a result,
            the additional memory only becomes available after a
            significant amount of time, such as hours or sometimes days.
            Even worse, this kind of page sharing algorithm generally
            consumes significant CPU resources and increases the
            virtualization overhead by 10 to 20%.
          </para>

          <para>
            Page Fusion in &product-name; uses logic in the
            &product-name; Guest Additions to quickly identify memory
            cells that are most likely identical across VMs. It can
            therefore achieve most of the possible savings of page
            sharing almost immediately and with almost no overhead.
          </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
            Page Fusion is also much less likely to be confused by
            identical memory that it will eliminate, just to learn
            seconds later that the memory will now change and having to
            perform a highly expensive and often service-disrupting
            reallocation.
          </para>
        </listitem>

      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        At this time, Page Fusion can only be controlled with
        <command>VBoxManage</command>, and only while a VM is shut down.
        To enable Page Fusion for a VM, use the following command:
      </para>

<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --pagefusion on</screen>

      <para>
        You can observe Page Fusion operation using some metrics.
        <computeroutput>RAM/VMM/Shared</computeroutput> shows the total
        amount of fused pages, whereas the per-VM metric
        <computeroutput>Guest/RAM/Usage/Shared</computeroutput> will
        return the amount of fused memory for a given VM. See
        <xref
        linkend="vboxmanage-metrics" /> for information on
        how to query metrics.
      </para>

      <note>
        <para>
          Enabling Page Fusion might indirectly increase the chances for
          malicious guests to successfully attack other VMs running on
          the same host. See <xref linkend="pot-insecure"/>.
        </para>
      </note>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

</chapter>