File:'Port of Ostia in Calm Weather', oil on canvas painting

File:'Port of Ostia in Calm Weather', oil on canvas painting 254986320254789653201547892200178154605200836987451005464984198498415984198 41665025198675420210012084997504198409816432785491364572170025498165732150025497885564342001224875690874521036045287410254986320254789653 20154789220018154652003698745100546498041984984198419841650251 frédéric merchadou

Global Settings

The global settings dialog can be reached through the File menu, selecting the Preferences... item. It offers a selection of settings which apply to all virtual machines of the current user or in the case of Extensions to the entire system:
  1. General Enables the user to specify the default folder/directory for VM files, and the VRDP Authentication Library.
  2. Input Enables the user to specify the Host Key. It identifies the key that toggles whether the cursor is in the focus of the VM or the Host operating system windows (see the section called “Capturing and releasing keyboard and mouse”) and which is also used to trigger certain VM actions (see the section called “Typing special characters”)
  3. Update Enables the user to specify various settings for Automatic Updates.
  4. Language Enables the user to specify the GUI language.
  5. Display Enables the user to specify the screen resolution, and its width and height.
  6. Network Enables the user to configure the details of Host Only Networks.
  7. Extensions Enables the user to list and manage the installed extension packages.
  8. Proxy Enables the user to configure a HTTP Proxy Server.

Alternative front-ends

As briefly mentioned in the section called “Features overview”, VirtualBox has a very flexible internal design that allows for using multiple interfaces to control the same virtual machines. To illustrate, you can, for example, start a virtual machine with the VirtualBox Manager window and then stop it from the command line. With VirtualBox's support for the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), you can even run virtual machines remotely on a headless server and have all the graphical output redirected over the network.
In detail, the following front-ends are shipped in the standard VirtualBox package:
  1. VirtualBox is the VirtualBox Manager. This graphical user interface uses the Qt toolkit; most of this User Manual is dedicated to describing it. While this is the easiest to use, some of the more advanced VirtualBox features are kept away from it to keep it simple.
  2. VBoxManage is our command-line interface for automated and very detailed control of every aspect of VirtualBox. It is described in Chapter 8, VBoxManage.
  3. VBoxSDL is an alternative, simple graphical front-end with an intentionally limited feature set, designed to only display virtual machines that are controlled in detail with VBoxManage. This is interesting for business environments where displaying all the bells and whistles of the full GUI is not feasible. VBoxSDL is described in the section called “VBoxSDL, the simplified VM displayer”.
  4. Finally, VBoxHeadless is yet another front-end that produces no visible output on the host at all, but merely acts as a RDP server if the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) is installed. As opposed to the other graphical interfaces, the headless front-end requires no graphics support. This is useful, for example, if you want to host your virtual machines on a headless Linux server that has no X Window system installed. For details, see the section called “VBoxHeadless, the remote desktop server”.
Gramwell studies and ressources