VirtualBox 3.2.12 Is Now Available

VirtualBox 3.2.12 has been released. It's a bug-fixing/maintenance release so don't expect anything too flashy. That said there are plenty of updates and fixes for both Linux guests and hosts and there should be no reason to hold back. The previous minor update added support for Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora 14.

Fixes for the virtual machine manager (VMM):

· rare host crash when running 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts;
· host reboots under rare circumstances due to NMIs triggered by active performance counters - Linux hosts in non-VT-x/AMD-V mode only;
· out of memory guru meditation for large memory guests;
· a guru meditation related to large pages;
· use new VT-x feature to keep the guest from hogging the CPU;

Linux specific fixes:

· hosts - fixed a crash with older Linux kernels and non-ASCII characters in USB device strings;
· hosts - fixed modem status lines with serial devices;
· hosts - added link state handling for TAP devices needed for proper operation with bridged networking on kernels 2.6.36 and above;
· hosts/guests - Linux 2.6.37 fixes;
· additions - properly compile the vboxvideo module if DKMS is not installed;
· additions - fixed a memory leak when accessing non-existing files on a Shared Folders.

VirtualBox 3.2.12 now checks host file systems for exceeding size limits and broken asynchronous I/O for older Linux kernels using EXT4 and XFS file systems both when first starting the virtual machine but also when recovering a saved state.

About Oracle VM VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a popular virtualization software now owned by Oracle after it bought Sun Microsystems. It works on all major x86 platforms and supports a large number of guest operating systems.

VirtualBox is closed source but is offered for free. There is also an open-source version dubbed Virtual Box OSE (open source edition).

VirtualBox 3.2.12 is available for download here on Softpedia.