Thushan Fernando Uncut

It only feels like last month Sun released VirtualBox 2.0 and they’ve just released 2.1 which brings a plethora of additional goodies… from the changelog:

• Support for hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) on Mac OS X hosts
• Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems (experimental; see user manual, chapter 1.6, 64-bit guests, page 16)
• Added support for Intel Nehalem virtualization enhancements (EPT and VPID; see user manual, chapter 1.2, Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V), page 10))
• Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL (see user manual, chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), page 66)
• Experimental LsiLogic and BusLogic SCSI controllers (see user manual, chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 70)
• Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots (see user manual, chapter 5.2, Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD), page 72)
• New NAT engine with significantly better performance, reliability and ICMP echo (ping) support (bugs #1046, #2438, #2223, #1247)
• New Host Interface Networking implementations for Windows and Linux hosts with easier setup (replaces TUN/TAP on Linux and manual bridging on Windows)

Some key things to note here, those “cool” people that run OS X can now get hardware virtualisation. Even if you have a 32bit host operating system your able to run 64bit hosts so long as you enable hardware acceleration on the CPU (AMD-V or Intel-VT) as VirtualBox’s Hypervisor requires this to work. A couple of other major additions - tested personally, include the enhanced virtualisation on the new Nahalem processors (Extended Page Table & Virtual Processor Identifier - see below) and the starting block for OpenGL (and later DirectX) Acceleration in XP and Vista. Testing this on OpenGL gave some decent performance though its still got a bit of work to do.

The move to include 3D acceleration is an interesting one, considering VMWare recently acquired Tungsten Graphics - who is the company behind Mesa, TTM memory manager and Gallium3D.  Interesting times ahead - as always

What’s an Extendable Page Table & that VPID thing???

Virtualisation in the Intel world comes in two flavours, the Intel VT-x and Intel VT-i Architectures. The VT-x is for IA-32 processors, whilst the VT-i is for Itanium processors.

Intel took a slice of the Virtualisation pie offered by AMD’s Pacifier architecture in implementing a method of translating ordinary IA-32 page tables from the guest-physical addresses to the host-physical addresses used to access memory. This way, guest’s can handle their own page tables directly and page-faults associated with them directly and minimize the (sizable) overhead associated with translating. This is known as Extended Page Tables (EPT).

Virtual Processor Identifiers (VPIDs) on the other hand allows a hypervisor (or a VMM) to assign a non-zero VPID to each virtual processor with the initial processor (VPID = 0) assigned to the hypervisor itself. This way, the CPU can use the VPIDs to tag translations in the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) which removes the performance penalties associated with flushing TLBs on VM Entry and exit.

Both these two bits of technology (along with NMI-window exiting)  come on the Nahelem processor’s Virtualisation enhancments. If your interested in a more indepth explanation see the article Solving Virtualisation Challenges with VT-X and VT-I from the Intel Technology Journal.

Other Changes in 2.1

• VMM: significant performance improvements for VT-x (real mode execution)
• VMM: support for hardware breakpoints (VT-x and AMD-V only; bug #477)
• VMM: VGA performance improvements for VT-x and AMD-V
• VMM: Solaris and OpenSolaris guest performance improvements for AMD-V (Barcelona family CPUs only)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation while running the Dr. Web virus scanner (software virtualization only; bug #1439)
• VMM: deactivate VT-x and AMD-V when the host machine goes into suspend mode; reactivate when the host machine resumes (Windows, Mac OS X & Linux hosts; bug #1660)
• VMM: fixed guest hangs when restoring VT-x or AMD-V saved states/snapshots
• VMM: fixed guru meditation when executing a one byte debug instruction (VT-x only; bug #2617)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation for PAE guests on non-PAE hosts (VT-x)
• VMM: disallow mixing of software and hardware virtualization execution in general (bug #2404)
• VMM: fixed black screen when booting OS/2 1.x (AMD-V only)
• GUI: pause running VMs when the host machine goes into suspend mode (Windows & Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: resume previously paused VMs when the host machine resumes after suspend (Windows & Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level (Windows hosts)
• GUI: properly restore the position of the selector window when running on the compiz window manager
• GUI: properly restore the VM in seamless mode (2.0 regression)
• GUI: warn user about non optimal memory settings
• GUI: structure operating system list according to family and version for improved usability
• GUI: predefined settings for QNX guests
• IDE: improved ATAPI passthrough support
• Networking: added support for up to 8 Ethernet adapters per VM
• Networking: fixed issue where a VM could lose connectivity after a reboot
• iSCSI: allow snapshot/diff creation using local VDI file
• iSCSI: improved interoperability with iSCSI targets
• Graphics: fixed handling of a guest video memory which is not a power of two (bug #2724)
• VBoxManage: fixed bug which prevented setting up the serial port for direct device access.
• VBoxManage: added support for VMDK and VHD image creation
• VBoxManage: added support for image conversion (VDI/VMDK/VHD/RAW)
• Solaris hosts: added IPv6 support between host and guest when using host interface networking
• Mac OS X hosts: added ACPI host power status reporting
• API: redesigned storage model with better generalization
• API: allow attaching a hard disk to more than one VM at a time
• API: added methods to return network configuration information of the host system
• Shared Folders: performance and stability fixes for Windows guests (Microsoft Office Applications)

Performance & Updates

Overall, on the two different machines that I’ve tried the new 2.1 release on, they’ve both “felt” snappier (QX6850 and a Core i7 965E - architecture summary) but unlike the 1.6 release - which was somewhat flakey for me, 2.x releases of VirtualBox are solid.

Dont take my word for it, download and try it out.

Gets me a VirtualBox 2.1

Grab your copy and try it out.

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for Windows hosts x86 | AMD64

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for OS X hosts Intel Macs

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for Linux hosts

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for Solaris and OpenSolaris hosts x86 | AMD64

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 Software Developer Kit (SDK) All platforms

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 User Manual (updated 2008-12-17)

Give it a shot, heck try OpenSolaris 2008.11 on there just for kicks!

Developer, Kernel / Internals, Linux/Unix, OpenSolaris, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Windows, hardware, software amd, amd64, hypervisor, ia32, ia64, Intel, linux, pacifier, PC, solaris, vanderpool, virtual, virtualbox, virtualisation, virtualization, virtualpc, vm, vmm, vmware, vt, Windows, x64, x86

Unless you’ve been living under a rock under the Apple tree you would have heard that a little company in Redmond WA has been working on a new version of Windows dubbed Windows 7 (which is what it will actually be called for once!).

At PDC today, Microsoft finally unveiled the much-anticipated release of Windows 7 and handed out pre-beta bits to atendees (tagged 6801.winmain_win7m3.081020-1655). They demonstrated a newer build which was tagged 6933.winmain.081020-184 during PDC which unfortunately was not given out. Unfortunately I couldn’t go due to work constraints, but in case your in the same boat I’ve collected some of the best sources of info out there for you to browse through.

First and foremost, some pretty pictures of the glassy new desktop UI.

Some interesting articles out of the many out there that are recommended reading:

• PC Magazine’s Inside Windows 7 Pre-Beta - Probably the first thing you should read.
• Extreme Tech’s Why Windows 7 Will Suck Less Than Vista - Offers a comparison between Vista and 7

For the pretty screenshots, see galleries here and here. More information and probably a bit more discussion will follow soon.

EDIT:
ArsTechnica have got an updated build reviewed which goes into bit more depth too and NeoWin has posted a nice gallery walkthrough of the Win7 UI and details about Vista SP2.

.NET / CLR / C#, Developer, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Windows, hardware, software apple, beta, bill, longhorn, microsoft, operating system, pdc, pre-release, redmond, seven, sp2, steve, vista, vista sp2, win7, Windows, windows 7, winmain

A few days ago OpenOffice 3.0 got released after 3 long years of development. You should download a copy and give it ago. To be perfectly honest, because of my MSDN suby’s I never really needed OpenOffice nor did I particularly like v2.x, but v3.0 is a breath of fresh minty air with a ray of bright Sun light beaming down from the heavens. The only times I’ve ever tried was under Linux, and even then I’ve often gone for Abiword instead to avoid the bloat.

It feels far more responsive than the 2.x versions I’ve tried, heck it even loads a helluva lot faster too and doesnt seem to chew up the resources 2.x did.

The Office Word compatibility has improved greatly. Learn more about OpenOffice 3.0 on the Linux Format article.

Then if that wasnt enough, Microsoft today launched Silverlight 2, which finally heads out of beta. Havent had a great deal of time to play with Silverlight but from the demos it looks kick-ass.

.NET / CLR / C#, Developer, Linux/Unix, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Web / Internets, Windows, software .NET, flash, linux, microsoft, office, openoffice, sliverlight, Windows, word

Mono has made it to version 2.0 today and brings so much goodness to the table. Some very cool new features and functionality to Mono and promises of speed improvements - which I dont doubt having tried a few things.

From the release notes:

Microsoft Compatible APIs

• ADO.NET 2.0 API for accessing databases.

• ASP.NET 2.0 API for developing Web-based applications.

• Windows.Forms 2.0 API to create desktop applications.

• System.XML 2.0: An API to manipulate XML documents.

• System.Core: Provides support for the Language Integrated Query (LINQ).

• System.Xml.Linq: Provides a LINQ provider for XML.

• System.Drawing 2.0 API: A portable graphics rendering API.

Mono APIs

• Gtk# 2.12: A binding to the Gtk+ 2.12 and GNOME libraries for creating desktop applications on Linux, Windows and MacOS X.
• Mono.Cecil: A library to manipulate ECMA CLI files (the native format used for executables and libraries).
• Mono.Cairo: A binding to the Cairo Graphics library to produce 2D graphics and render them into a variety of forms (images, windows, postscript and PDF).
• Mono’s SQLite support: a library to create and consume databases created with SQLite.
• Mono.Posix: a library to access Linux and Unix specific functionality from your managed application. With both a low-level interface as well as higher level interfaces.

Third Party APIs bundled with Mono

• Extensive support for databases: PostgresSQL, DB2, Oracle, Sybase, SQL server, SQLite and Firebird.
• C5 Generics Library: we are bundling the C5 generics collection class library as part of Mono.

Compilers

These compilers are part of the Mono 2.0 release:

• C# 3.0 compiler implementation, with full support for LINQ.
• Visual Basic 8 compiler.
• IL assembler and disassembler and the development toolchain required to create libraries and applications.

Tools

Mono includes profiling tools, the standard development kit tools that are part of the .NET framework

• Debugger: this is the first release when we support a debugger for managed code.
• Gendarme: is an extensible rule-based tool to find problems in .NET applications and libraries. Gendarme inspects programs and libraries that contain code in ECMA CIL format (Mono and .NET) and looks for common problems with the code, problems that compiler do not typically check or have not historically checked.
• Mono Linker: a linker that allows developers to reduce the size of their executables and libraries by removing features from libraries using an XML definition of the desired public API.
• Mono Tuner: a tool to apply arbitrary user-defined transformations to assemblies. Mono uses this library to produce the Silverlight core libraries from the main system libraries.
• Mono Documentation Tools: the Mono Documentation framework has been upgraded to support documenting generics and extension methods. The tools can be used to produce online and offline documentation for any any APIs, and are used by the project to document our own APIs.

There are so many goodies in this release if C# 3.0 with LINQ loving doesnt entice you already and the fact that Mono now provides a complete WinForms 2.0 implementation for OS X & Linux.

Whats cooler is the WebBrowser control powered by Gecko that ships with Mono, this would be an ideal drop in replacement for the MSHTML control.

Implementations of Table Layout and Flow Layout Panels and Big Arrays.

Go ahead and download a copy and give it a whirl. My how Mono has come over the years.

.NET / CLR / C#, Developer, Linux/Unix, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Web / Internets, Windows, software .NET, c#, clr, compiler, mono, vb.net, winforms

DeveloperFusion has just soft-launched its slick new look and feel, go take a looksy and drool. From the humble beginnings, to the golden years and the times of change we have finally come to the slick new Web 2.0 era - maybe a tad late but damn it was worth the wait!

James is now full time at DF working away at making DF the greatest community driven site around.

.NET / CLR / C#, Design Patterns, Developer, Java, Tools / Products, Web / Internets, software .NET, c#, Developer, developerfusion, Java, Work

VMWare just released Fusion 2.0 which is a free update for 1.x users of the fruity OS, among the enhancements…

Greatly improved 3D performance and compatibility with DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 2 software and games. (VMware Fusion runs best with the latest graphics hardware, like the NVIDIA 8800 GT, ATI Radeon HD 2600, and ATI Radeon HD 3870.)

When playing high-definition video (720p, 1080i, 1080p) in a Windows XP or Windows Vista virtual machine, VMware Fusion now uses hardware acceleration for smooth video playback

Which is quite a feat, whilst I’m not a Fusion user - No Apple, It just Works!!! - it seems the Fusion Hypervisor is doing some serious legwork now. Whats more (heh) VMWare even ‘collaborated’ with McAfee to give those Apple users a little something something for their Windoze experience:

Virus Protection and Firewall Included for Windows XP and Vista Virtual Machines

• To keep your Windows-on-Mac experience as safe as possible, VMware Fusion includes a complimentary 12-month subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus to protect your Windows investment

Funny.

Developer, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Windows, humour, software apple, fusion, hypervisor, mac, Products, software, vmware

One of the most kick-ass players out there has just released a new version after more than 2 years in development. VLC 0.9.2 which comes with a spanking new UI and a host of cool new features.

enuff chit-chat, go download and install.

NOTE: The server is no doubt being hammered right now, so be patient.

Developer, Tools / Products, software linux, mac, media, player, software, video, Windows

The next addition to in the series for Microsoft staring Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld trying to look normal.

A shorter version is also available with part 1 and part 2 in WMV format. Compared to the first release which took the two gentlement to Shoe-Circus I think this new (longer) version is far better.

“I Love a condiment with Booze in it.” - Jerry

“Because as we discussed, you and I are a little out of it… you’re living in some kind of moon house hovering over seatle like the mothership… I got so many cars I get stuck in my own traffic.” - Jerry

“The fact that a design uses inheritance and polymorphisim doesnt make it a good design.” - Bill
“…Are there any monsters in the story?” - Little kid in bed
“Yes! but its ok, theres a firewall.” - Bill

“Power off… ok, power on.” - Jerry whilst Bill doing the Robot

Personally I quite like this one, and the fact that Mr Gates does the robot - I mean come on….

.NET / CLR / C#, Developer, General, Its My Life, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Web / Internets, Windows, humour bill gates, comedy, funny, humour, jerry seinfeld, microsoft, vista, Windows

One of the hottest Virtualisation applications going around the internets these days is Sun’s recently aquired VirtualBox software suite. The bright folks at Sun have just announced version 2.0 release which is a couple of days after the 1.6.6 maintenance release.

Being a fan of VirtualBox from around the 1.3.x days when it was owned by Innotek and seeing it mature the way it has, its been quite impressive - if not for the wide platform compatibility and the fact that its a ‘free’ product for personal use that’s competitive with commercial offerings such as VMWare - which has been my fulltime VM product (loving VMWare 6.5 btw!).

VirtualBox 2.0 brings some uber goodness to the mix (from the changelog):

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

• 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only)
• New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
• The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements
• New-version notifier
• Guest property information interface
• Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
• New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts
• Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)
• Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)
• Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)
• Clipboard integration for OS/2 Guests
• Created separate SDK component featuring a new Python programming interface on Linux and Solaris hosts
• Support for VHD disk images

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: VT-x fixes
• AHCI/SATA: improved performance
• GUI: keyboard fixes
• Linux installer: properly uninstall the package even if unregistering the DKMS module fails
• Linux additions: the guest screen resolution is properly restored
• Network: added support for jumbo frames (> 1536 bytes)
• Shared Folders: fixed guest crash with Windows Media Player 11
• Mac OS X: Ctrl+Left mouse click doesn’t simulate a right mouse click in the guest anymore. Use Hostkey+Left for a right mouse click emulation. (bug #1766)

Download your copy based on your Operating System:

• VirtualBox 2.0.0 for Windows hosts x86 | AMD64 (only on Windows x64!)

• VirtualBox 2.0.0 for OS X hosts Intel Macs

• VirtualBox 2.0.0 for Linux hosts

• VirtualBox 2.0.0 for Solaris and OpenSolaris hosts x86 | AMD64

• VirtualBox 2.0.0 Software Developer Kit (SDK) All platforms

After installing 2.0, my 1.6.x images seamlessly moved to the 2.0 release with minimal fuss, just make sure you shutdown your VMs prior to upgrading to avoid hassles.

Not to be forgotten is VMWare’s upcoming 6.5 release which is rolling full steam ahead!

Developer, Linux/Unix, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Windows amd-v, hypervisor, intel vt, software, virtualbox, virtualisation, virtualization, vmware

So I’ve been high on Chrome the last day or so, but alas I had to uninstalled it.

Nicely done Google.

Developer, Its My Life, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Web / Internets, Windows browser, chrome, funny, google, humour