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RemoteBox Changelog

What's new in RemoteBox 2.0

Jul 12, 2015
  • RemoteBox now requires VirtualBox 5.0.x.
  • Added guest support for USB 3.0.
  • Added OS icons for Windows 10, OS/2 1.x, Yosemite, El Capitan
  • Added command line options for automatic login. See manual.
  • Added option to set the virtual VGA card of a guest to either VirtualBox VGA
  • or VMware SVGA-II
  • Allow snapshots to be taken while the guest is paused
  • Added support for adding USB storage controller to a guest
  • Added support for adding transient shared folders
  • Added support for setting IPv6 Port Forwarding rules on NAT networks
  • Added option to convert disk images to VDI when importing an appliance
  • Changed the way guest details are displayed and added an option to show
  • extended (slower) or reduced (faster) guest details
  • Added support for selecting built-in presets for the RDP clients. These are
  • currently FreeRDP (New Syntax), FreeRDP (Old Syntax), Rdesktop, Windows
  • Remote Desktop Client
  • Added support for selecting the paravirtualization interface for a guest
  • Added keyboard toolbutton for quick access to common keyboard sequences. The
  • full keyboard menu is still available
  • Fixed a problem with trailing slashes in a URL preventing the remote display
  • to a guest from opening.
  • Fixed a problem with UTF8 strings affecting the listing of storage attached
  • to controllers
  • Fixed an issue where 'Stuck' guests couldn't be stopped from the GUI.
  • Various GUI tweaks

New in RemoteBox 1.9 (Oct 26, 2014)

  • Combined guest logs onto a single tabbed window
  • Added fix to show documentation when running on Windows
  • Added Memory Bar to show memory usage on the server
  • Added support for importing OVF/OVA appliances
  • Added support for exporting a VM as an OVF/OVA appliance
  • Added support for setting IPv4 Port Forwarding rules on NAT networks
  • Improvements made to error handling on most dialogs
  • Various GUI tweaks

New in RemoteBox 1.8.1 (Jun 9, 2014)

  • Minor release to fix SOAP versioning issues experienced by some users
  • Bundle appdata.xml file for packagers with distros that use it

New in RemoteBox 1.8 (May 28, 2014)

  • Added option to automatically start chosen guests when the host system boots.
  • This requires some server side configuration before it can be used. Consult the RemoteBox manual for more information.
  • Added option to set the start delay on an autostarting guest so that guests can be started up in a specific sequence if required.
  • Added option to set the shutdown type on a guest when the host is shutdown
  • Added VirtualBox preference to set the location of the autostart database
  • Snapshot Tree: Moved 'current state' underneath the most recent snapshot in the tree
  • Added state icons to the snapshot list, which indicate if a snapshot is an online or offline snapshot
  • Optimized list handling in several places which should improve performance and remember selections on list refreshes where practical.
  • Added additional information when a storage medium is selected in the VMM
  • Added additional guest keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl-Alt-(F4, F5, F6, F8, F9, F10, F11)
  • Added ability to add, remove and edit NAT Networks via the VirtualBox preferences menu item. Port forwarding rules must be configured elsewhere for the moment.
  • Added option to set the network attachment type in the guest settings to
  • 'NAT Network'. These are named NAT networks which are subtly different to just 'NAT'.
  • Added option to set the snapshot folder location for a guest
  • Added OS icons for various editions of MacOS X.
  • Added support for guest groups. Groups are shown in a tree-fashion which is somewhat visually different to VirtualBox. Setting guest groups is fairly rudimentary at the moment requiring you to enter the group in the form of '/group/subgroup'.
  • Added 'Expand All Groups' and 'Collapse All Groups' buttons. The last used button is remembered for subsequent refreshes of the guest list
  • Fixed some Windows guest icons.
  • Fixed a bug when creating Host-Only networks. An associated virtual DHCP server wasn't getting created which would cause invalid object references and ultimately made the Host-Only network feature useless.
  • Fixed a bug when entering folders in the remote file chooser that denied permission but the location was still updated. Now also warns that you don't have permission to enter that folder
  • Fixed a bug where a medium would be masked out in lists if another medium with the same name existed.
  • Fixed a bug where the Video Memory could get erroneously pegged to 1MB on the first opening on the settings dialog.
  • Inaccessible guests are now filtered from the list of guests and a warning issued in the message log. RemoteBox has never handled inaccessible guests well and for the most part the cause is generally the user manipulating guests without VirtualBox's knowledge.
  • Various GUI tweaks

New in RemoteBox 1.7 (Jan 30, 2014)

  • Added Video Capture support for the guest's display
  • FreeRDP (aka xfreerdp) is now the default and recommended RDP client. If you used rdesktop previously, your preferences will follow however you can update
  • your preferences if you desire. Go to File->RemoteBox Preferences and under RDP client, change it to: xfreerdp -g %Xx%Y --plugin cliprdr --plugin rdpsnd -T "%n RemoteBox" %h:%p NOTE: You may need to install the freerdp package for your operating system.
  • Added additional substitutions for use with the RDP Client preference. These are:
  • %X The Auto-Hint Resolution width
  • %Y The Auto-Hint Resolution height
  • %D The Auto-Hint Resolution depth
  • These can be used for specifying desired resolutions with your RDP client.
  • Fixed a bug where cached information (which was potentially invalid) was not flushed completely across a new connection to a server
  • Fixed a guest cloning bug where the machine reference was being used before the guest was fully cloned, causing GUI deadlock until the clone had completed
  • Fixed adding a host only network interfaces where the new interface would not immediately show up. Primarily only affected windows hosts
  • Fixed a bug preventing logging in when using Perl 5.18 (Fedora 20, OpenSUSE 13.1, NetBSD 6, FreeBSD etc)
  • Improved remote file path handling across disparate operating systems (again)
  • Improved remote file dialogs
  • Improved progress dialogs. They show time remaining where available and can be cancelled where VirtualBox allows.
  • Spin boxes now accept case insensitive unit qualifiers where applicable: (eg MB, GB, TB) for specifying memory and disk sizes (eg ms, secs, mins) for specifying time
  • Worked around a bug where VirtualBox strips the leading path of a location on a reload when a double / is found in the path. This could cause disks to be inaccessible (due to incorrect path) when VirtualBox is reloaded.
  • Various GUI tweaks

New in RemoteBox 1.5 (Nov 26, 2012)

  • Most of the guest's settings can now be changed while the guest is running, which should reduce the inconvenience of shutting the guest as previously required.
  • Added ability to save screenshots of guests as PNG images.
  • Added icon for Solaris 11 (64bit) guest OS
  • Added icon for Windows 2012 (64bit) guest OS
  • Added status icons for each guest in the list
  • Added icons to the storage page when editing guest settings
  • Now uses additional 'recommendedChipset', 'recommendedAudioController', 'recommendedFloppy' and 'recommendedUSB' defaults when creating a new guest
  • Fixed the System->Advanced->Time Offset widget when editing guest settings. The time offset could not be adjusted.
  • Fixed the Display->Remote Display->Video Stream Quality widget when editing guest settings. The stream quality could not be adjusted.
  • Fixed the memory setting, it no longer artificially limits a guest to 16GB of RAM
  • Various minor GUI tweaks
  • Added SSL certificate verification option

New in RemoteBox 1.4 (Sep 15, 2012)

  • This version primarily brings VirtualBox 4.2.x support and drops support for the VirtualBox 4.1.x branch.
  • Added the ability to hot-plug and hot-unplug CPUs from the guest whilst it is running. This requires setting the CPU hotplug option in the guest settings. You are advised to read the RemoteBox manual regarding this feature because support varies depending on the OS used in the guest.
  • Added support for creating QED QEMU hard disk images
  • Added support for creating QCOW QEMU hard disk images
  • Added the ability to attach physical CD/DVD drives to a guest
  • Added the ability to attach physical floppy drives to a guest
  • Improved guest session handlers and guest locking
  • Deleting a guest now deletes the associated screenshot icon (if any)
  • Increased the number of configurable network cards for a guest to 8 cards. The selected card is now chosen by a combobox rather than a tab.
  • Added additional keyboard entries which send keyboard sequences of the form 'Alt-SysRq+x', for example Alt-SysRq+F1. These were often used under very old UNIX flavours such as Dell UNIX, AT&T UNIX, ISC UNIX etc to switch between virtual terminals.
  • Added button to generate a new MAC address for a virtual network card when editing a guest's settings
  • Fixed a minor bug where file permissions were being shown as decimal numbers in the remote file chooser, rather than the conventional octal.

New in RemoteBox 1.2 (Jan 1, 2012)

  • Rebased from GTK 2.16 to GTK 2.22 as the minimum version. If your OS / Distro is not new enough, you may wish to remain at v1.1.
  • Added support for creating Full, State and Linked clones of guests
  • When creating a parallels hard disk the image is now created with the .hdd extension rather than .parallels
  • The state of the option on the connect dialog to save URLs and Usernames is now remembered between RemoteBox sessions
  • Added option to attach an empty CD/DVD drive when editing a guest's settings
  • Added option to attach an empty Floppy drive when editing a guest's settings
  • Added option to manually set the port count for SATA controllers
  • Added option to mark a hard disk image as a Solid State disk
  • Added an option to mark a CD/DVD image as a Live CD/DVD.
  • Added ability to manually set the port on a controller that a medium is attached to
  • Added a refresh button to the Virtual Media Manager to refresh the list of current media
  • Added support for changing a disk images type to Normal, Writethrough, Immutable and Multi-Attach
  • Added a facility in the VMM to provide for the duplication and copying of hard disks. This also allows you to convert a disk from one format to another
  • Timestamps are now prefixed to entries in the message log
  • Hopefully finally fixed the bug where the change CD and Floppy menus were available when they should not be, even though this was supposed to be fixed in v1.1
  • More fixes to the DVD & Floppy items in the Machine menu. On occassions it would still permit you to change disks on an unselected guest.
  • Minor bug fix when reporting errors from VirtualBox or SOAP which contained characters. This would end up being treated as GTK markup
  • Fixed the maximum BIOS time waiting to 65535. Higher values are invalid and the guest will not start until its changed.
  • The usual plethora of GUI tweaks
  • Significant code optimisation with rebasing to GTK 2.22

New in RemoteBox 1.1 (Oct 25, 2011)

  • Cosmetic changes to the New Virtual Machine and Create New HD dialogs
  • Cosmetic changes to the network part of the Edit Settings dialog
  • Added support for creating a new guest without a hard disk
  • Added support for creating VMDK disk images (Dynamic, Fixed and 2GiB Split types)
  • Added support for creating VHD disk images (Dynamic and Fixed types)
  • Added support for creating Parallels disk images (Dynamic)
  • Added additional run-time information such as the version of guest additions installed when showing 'more details' for a guest
  • Added supported for setting the promiscuous mode policy on guest network adapters
  • Added support for setting a generic network driver and generic properties
  • Improved the handling of ports on storage controllers, for example SATA controllers are not created with all ports enabled by default
  • Improved the internal network name widget. A drop down list of internal networks is now presented rather than having to manually type it
  • Now displays a warning if the server does not have the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack installed or if the extension pack is outdated.
  • Fixed a minor bug when showing 'more details' for a guest. The network details were not shown.
  • Fixed minor bug where the Remove and Release buttons on the VMM dialog were sometimes enabled when they shouldn't have been.
  • Fixed a bug where the change CD and Floppy menus were available, even when a guest was powered off
  • Attaching storage to a guest now explicitly saves the guest settings, even if you subsequently press cancel in order to work around what seems to be a VirtualBox bug. Previously, attaching a disk but cancelling the settings lead to a dichotomy where the disk image believed it was attached to the guest but the guest disagreed. This would cause side-effects such as being unable to release the medium or VirtualBox complaining that a disk referenced a guest which does not exist.

New in RemoteBox 1.0 (Aug 10, 2011)

  • This version concentrated on bringing compatibility with VirtualBox 4.1.X. New VirtualBox 4.1 features will be added in subsequent releases.
  • Fixed a particularly horrible bug which was probably introduced in 0.8 or 0.9 caused by the unintentional emmission of GTK signals when opening the edit window for the first time on a new connection. Any guest settings which used a slider (eg memory) but get set to the base value and be saved if the user chose save.
  • Fixed a bug where attempting to delete a snapshot with more than one child would cause an unmanged object reference.
  • Further improvements to the remote file chooser dialog. File paths are now better "sanitised".

New in RemoteBox 0.9 (Jul 22, 2011)

  • Several bugs have been fixed, and improvements were made to the remote file chooser and the GUI in general.
  • Main window position and size are preserved on exit.
  • Existing guests can now be added and registered with VirtualBox as well as being unregistered without deleting the files.
  • This will be the last release supporting VirtualBox 4.0.x.
  • The next release will require VirtualBox 4.1.x.

New in RemoteBox 0.8 (Apr 4, 2011)

  • Added support for configuring a parallel port in the guests. Note: Parallel port is only supported on VirtualBox hosts running Linux.
  • Added "Advanced" and "Boot Logo" tabs to the "System" page of the "Edit Settings" window.
  • The fade settings of the guest BIOS screen can now be configured.
  • The waiting time on the guest BIOS screen can also be configured. Useful for pressing BIOS hot keys etc.
  • The BIOS logo is now customizable. The image file must be a 640x480 uncompressed BMP file with a 256 colour (8bit) palette.
  • Time offsets can now be applied to guests' clocks. The guest will run its clock ahead of the host's clock with the specified offset. This is not intended to replace correctly configured timezones in guests.
  • Added support for sending video hints to the guest, to change its screen resolution. Several pre-defined screen resolutions exist as well as an option to set a custom screen resolution. Access the resolutions from the "Machine" menu
  • Added support for sending Ctrl-c and Ctrl-d keyboard sequences to the guest. Access the keyboard sequences from the "Machine" menu
  • Added option to configure CPU Hot Plugging for a guest
  • Added option to configure Page Fusion for a guest. Page Fusion can reduce host memory consumption when running many similar guests.
  • Added option to enable the use of Large Pages (if your OS supports them), this can provide a small performance increase
  • Added ability to set the amount of host CPU time each guest is allowed to consume
  • Added support for setting the virtual keyboard type. Supported types are: None, PS2, USB, and Combo.
  • Added an option to provide a guest with an HPET (High Precision Event Timer)
  • Added an option to allow VirtualBox to share the hardware virtualization extensions (VT-x/AMD-V) with other Hypervisors.
  • Added a caching mechanism to the editing of guest settings which should speed up the opening of the "Edit Settings" window.
  • Added a remotebox preference to automatically open the guest's display when the guest is started. Default is enabled, but can be disabled in preferences
  • Added a remotebox preference to configure the default action of the "Stop" button. Previously it defaulted to "Instant Power Off" but can now be configured to do an "ACPI Shutdown" or "Save State". Note, the button's popup menu is still available to choose an alternative from the default
  • The message log now remembers whether it was expanded or not between program runs.
  • The "Serial" page of the "Edit Settings" window has now been renamed to "I/O Ports"
  • Various minor tweaks to the GUI
  • Fixed preference file handling in the unlikely case where a parameter contains an '=' character.

New in RemoteBox 0.7 (Feb 21, 2011)

  • Implemented a file selector dialog for navigating the file system on the remote server. This means hard disk images, CD/DVD isos and floppy disk images can be added into VirtualBox easily. You no longer need to manually type the complete path and remember the location.
  • Fixed the message log scrolling. It now automatically scrolls completely to the bottom.
  • The message log can now be made hidden or visible using an expander.
  • CDs, DVDs and Floppies can now be added directly by selecting the DVD or Floppy Drive when editing the storage for guest. You no longer need to select the controller itself.
  • The VMM now shows if media is not accessible in the list views, with the reason shown as a tooltip
  • Fixed regression which was disallowing the removal ('deletion') of inaccessible hard disks.
  • Fixed a regression where DVDs/CDs & Floppies could not be unmounted from the RMB menu.
  • The 'Use existing hard disk' option when creating a new guest now lists the existing hard disks in alphabetical order.
  • Major optimisation of show_rmb_menu(), should help the right mouse button menu feel more responsive, particularly on slow connections. Also the right mouse button popup menu is now identical to the main Machine menu.
  • Added location field to bottom of VMM dialog
  • Hopefully fixed an issue where UTF-8 characters could cause the SOAP module to raise an exception.
  • Added Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F2, Ctrl-Alt-F3, Ctrl-Alt-F7 and Ctrl-Alt-F12 guest keyboard inserts.

New in RemoteBox 0.6 (Jan 25, 2011)

  • Removed default hard disk folder preference. No longer required with VirtualBox 4
  • As VirtualBox 4 now consolidates storage and guest settings together, the creation of new hard disk images has been moved to the storage tab under the guest settings and is no longer part of the Virtual Media Manager.
  • Further improved the defaults when creating a new guest, including HPET,
  • Pointer Type, Network Adapter Type and RTC
  • Added support for Intel HDA audio controller
  • Added support for auto-mounting VirtualBox shared folders
  • Added support for setting the motherboard chipset (PIIX3 or ICH9)
  • Added icon for JRockitVE
  • Attaching CD/DVD drives to SATA controllers is now permitted
  • Shared folders list now warns if a shared folder is not accessible

New in RemoteBox 0.5 (Nov 22, 2010)

  • Added support for creating, editing, deleting and enabling USB device filters
  • (Machine->Settings->USB)
  • Added support for pausing and resuming guest execution
  • (Machine->Pause), (Machine->Resume)
  • Added an option for setting the clipboard mode between guest and host
  • Added an option to specify the remote display quality.
  • Added icons to the OS Version comboboxes
  • Added icons to the OS Family comboboxes
  • Added progress bar windows which pop up for potentially lengthy operations
  • Added option to configure the default hard disk folder.
  • (File->VirtualBox Preferences->General)
  • Added option to configure default machine folder.
  • (File->VirtualBox Preferences->General)
  • Added option to set the VRDP authentication library.
  • (File->VirtualBox Preferences->General)
  • Added support for adding, removing and editing host-only networks, including
  • the configuration of the DHCP server
  • (File->VirtualBox Preferences->Network)
  • The snapshot details dialog now lets you edit the name and description of an
  • existing snapshot
  • Replaced the status bar with a messages list which holds more history
  • Moved the user config file to the freedesktop location as specified by
  • get_user_config_dir(). On most distros this usually expands to
  • $HOME/.config/remotebox.conf. You will need to move your existing config file
  • if you wish to preserve it.
  • RemoteBox no longer exclusively uses the first port specified in the guest
  • config when attempting an RDP connection. This means RemoteBox will still
  • connect to the remote display when the server chooses another port if the
  • primary port is already in use.
  • Lots of code restructuring and cleanup
  • Deleting a medium which is locked by another process should no longer produce
  • a bunch of unmanaged object reference messages.

New in RemoteBox 0.4 (Oct 18, 2010)

  • This version primarily adds support for taking, deleting, and restoring snapshots.
  • Some cosmetic changes have been done to the main window and the VMM.
  • A few minor bugs were fixed.

New in RemoteBox 0.3 (Jul 17, 2010)

  • New : Added operating system icons to the guest list.
  • New : Removable media can now be changed whilst the guest is running. Access it from the popup menu in the guest list.
  • New : Added support for configuring the serial ports of a guest
  • New : Added support for configuring the shared folders available to a guest
  • New : Added option to disable/enable the use of host I/O caching
  • New : Displays a message with the reason, if a guest can't be started.
  • New : Reports back error messages from the web service.
  • Updated: Significant improvements to the session handling.
  • Updated: Various minor modifications to the GUI.
  • Fixed : Media with underscores in the filename were generating accelerator keys in menus
  • Fixed : Non explicit selections in treeviews returned empty values. Only
  • Ubuntu 10 seemed affected, probably due to a behaviour change in the shipped version of GTK/Gtk2-perl
  • Fixed : Also set the EFI checkbox when editing a guest's settings if the firmware is set to EFI32, EFI64 and EFIDUAL rather than just EFI.

New in RemoteBox 0.2 (Jun 26, 2010)

  • New : Added "Connect to Server" and "Reset" menu items.
  • New : Added icons to most tabs on the Main, Edit, VMM, New Guest and New
  • Hard Disk windows.
  • New : Added reset toolbutton.
  • New : Added support for setting UTC hardware clocks.
  • New : Added support for setting virtual mouse type. Supported types are:
  • None, PS2, USB, USB Table and Combo.
  • New : Added support for setting the number of virtual monitors
  • New : The option to set the RDP authentication method is now supported.
  • New : The option to set the RDP timeout value is now supported.
  • New : Added option to allow multiple remote display connections to a single
  • guest.
  • New : Guests (without snapshots) can now be deleted.
  • New : Added scrollbars to the Hard Disk, CD/DVD and Floppy disks list in the
  • Virtual Media Manager window.
  • New : Added context sensitive menu to guest list (press right mouse button).
  • New : Added initial keyboard support, Ctrl-Alt-Del added to context
  • sensitive menu on guest list.
  • New : Guest Name, Operating System and Status columns are now sortable by
  • clicking on the column headers
  • Removed: The shutdown dialog is no longer needed so has been removed.
  • Updated: Complete revamp of the Storage Page of the Edit Settings window
  • Updated: Toolbar icons on Main and Virtual Media Manager windows.
  • Updated: Main menu icons.
  • Updated: Most windows/dialogs are now transients of their parents.
  • Updated: Stop toolbar button no longer opens a dialog, but has a side menu
  • which lets you choose the type of shutdown.
  • Updated: Stop menu item no longer opens a dialog, but opens a sub menu to
  • choose the type of shutdown.
  • Updated: Various other subtle changes to the UI.
  • Fixed : Broken audio driver decoding in 'Details' which would lead to an
  • exception when performing subsequent tasks.
  • Fixed : You can longer add a CD/DVD device and ISO to a non IDE storage
  • controller as this is not yet supported by VirtualBox and would
  • prevent the guest from starting.
  • Fixed : Start option was broken in the Machine menu due to a last minute
  • change.
  • Fixed : Duplicate entries in the OS Version lists when reconnecting.