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An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

virtualbox.org

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#21
This release introduces MacOS guest support, but the license agreement for MacOS states that it must not be run on non-Apple hardware. From the VirtualBox manual:

"Mac OS X verifies whether it is running on Apple hardware, ...these restrictions are not circumvented by VirtualBox and continue to apply."

Wonder how long until someone patches the source to remove this check. A guest OS shouldn't be able to snoop and find out what kind of hardware the host OS is running on...smells like a hack.

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#23
The Mac OS X support is cool and I would love to be able to run older OS X versions in a VM, but it looks like they've still got quite a bit of work before it is really usable. Issues include:

"Even when idle, OS X guests currently burn 100% CPU. This is a power management issue that will be addressed in a future release."

:(

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch14.html

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#25
post #14

Considering my primary dev environment for personal projects is an Ubuntu 10.04 VM running on Virtual Box, this is good news. Double bonus the new version has support for taking full advantage of i5 and i7 procs, and I'm running an i7 920. Time to upgrade when I get home tonight.

Virtualbox is absolutely brilliant for reverse-engineering windows executables so I'm glad to hear this.

Are you using it strictly as a virtualisation host, or are you using the fact that you can set up serial ports and whatnot to do Windows kernel debugging?

I personally use VMWare Fusion for reversing Windows executables, VMs are invaluable in that snapshotting aids in quickly returning to a known good state, and I can continue to take notes in applications outside of the VM to keep track of my progress.

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#26

The Mac OS X support is cool and I would love to be able to run older OS X versions in a VM, but it looks like they've still got quite a bit of work before it is really usable. Issues include: "Even when idle, OS X guests currently burn 100% CPU. This is a power management issue that will be addressed in a future release." :( http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch14.html

Ah, I was wondering why it was doing that! :-) Other than that, though, OS X under this version is pretty snappy given the circumstances.

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#27

This release introduces MacOS guest support, but the license agreement for MacOS states that it must not be run on non-Apple hardware. From the VirtualBox manual: "Mac OS X verifies whether it is running on Apple hardware, ...these restrictions are not circumvented by VirtualBox and continue to apply." Wonder how long until someone patches the source to remove this check. A guest OS shouldn't be able to snoop and fin…

It doesn't find out what hardware it's running on. The stock kernel has a driver for the TPM module. When it doesn't find a TPM module the kernel panics. You have two options, emulate a TPM module with the correct keys, or replace the driver with one that gives the kernel the answer it wants.

This is the basis for the "hackintosh"

I'd hazard a guess that it would be pretty easy to get this going on VirtualBox using iBoot + Multibeast.

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#28

This release introduces MacOS guest support, but the license agreement for MacOS states that it must not be run on non-Apple hardware. From the VirtualBox manual: "Mac OS X verifies whether it is running on Apple hardware, ...these restrictions are not circumvented by VirtualBox and continue to apply." Wonder how long until someone patches the source to remove this check. A guest OS shouldn't be able to snoop and fin…

Just from abounding laziness… If I'm running Linux on my Mac Mini, can I run Mac OS X in VirtualBox? The words say yes, but I rather doubt the executable says yes.

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#29
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I experimented with OpenSolaris, it seemed as though it was very useful for Java development, but not a whole lot else. It might have changed since then though.

It's a decent Unix OS. It's as comfy as any modern Linux distro. Much nicer than, say, AIX for a development desktop.

What does it do better than Solaris 10, which seems about the equivalent of AIX or HPUX in terms of installation, package deployment, and toolset maintenance (as little as possible).

Re: An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project

#30
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I experimented with OpenSolaris, it seemed as though it was very useful for Java development, but not a whole lot else. It might have changed since then though.

It's a decent Unix OS. It's as comfy as any modern Linux distro. Much nicer than, say, AIX for a development desktop.

> Much nicer than, say, AIX for a development desktop.

Interesting observation. In what way do you think Solaris is better for dev than AIX?

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