Solution: Sharing VM on Multiple User Mac

[gwbarrow]

I seem to have solved the "multiple user" problem described in other posts, where a Parallels Desktop VM is accessible under one user account on a multiple-user Mac, but not under other accounts.

The KnowledgeBase article here (http://kb.parallels.com/entry/27/119/) recommends moving the winxp.hdd and winxp.pvs files to /Users/Shared/Parallels/winxp and giving "Others" write permissions.

But, as others have reported, this didn't fix the problem. Even with the vm files in the Shared directory, and permissions changed as recommended, the error message:
"WINXP.HDD the file is missing, corrupted or used by other appplication"
appeared whenever I tried to start the "shared" VM under another user account. Even worse, once I had gotten this error, the ORIGINAL user could no longer access the winxp.hdd!

The solution is to copy the directory that Parallels creates in the original user's Library -- /Users/[username]/Library/Parallels -- to the Library of the other user accounts.

That directory contains another directory named "winxp," inside of which are:

unattended.fdd
Windows Applications (a folder)
winxp.sav


Once I had copies of these files in /Users/[otheruser]/Library/Parallel/winxp/ other users could access the shared VM. It also fixed a problem I'd been having with Novell Login!

[spectre]

Thanks for the information.
I've corrected the KB article for it to describe that whole VM folder should be moved, not just the pvs and hdd files.
/Users/[username]/Library/Parallels - it's the old default path for the VMs from Parallels Desktop 2.2. So some older VM folders can still be found there.

[gwbarrow]

Glad I could contribute.

But now I'm puzzled, because we ARE running Parallels 3! Admittedly, we upgraded from 2, so that's why these files were placed in /Users/[username]/Library/ to begin with.

Yet when I copied these files to this "old" Parallels 2 location under the other user accounts, it fixed our multiple-user problem in Parallels 3.

Why is that? Is it because Parallels 3 supports using the old location?

Since that seems to be the case, wouldn't it in fact be preferable to keep these files -- unattended.fdd, Windows Applications, and winxp.sav, which presumably might get changed when any given user runs the VM -- in that user's directory rather than in the shared directory?

I'd like to understand what the best practice is because we're about to roll out 25 copies of Parallels in a Lab full of iMacs.

Thanks.

[chipshot4me]

I'm a new user and have tried this process for sharing my WinXP VM between users.

1. Copied Parallels folder from my acct to /users/shared
2. Changed permissions to read/write for others

Opened Parallels in MY account (the one where the vm was originally created) and it didn't know where to find the vm after it was moved. I don't know where the pointer exists that directs Parallels (my account) to the new "shared" location - is this at startup when it asks whether I want to create a vm? I was reluctant to point it to the shared folder, for fear that it would corrupt the image (I don't want to be an expert in reloading software..)

My goal is simple - to share the WinXP VM between myself and my wife's account, never to be accessed simultaneously.

Many thanks in advance for your help

Config
Parallels 3.0 for MAC (build 4128)
Mac OS X v10.4.10
iMac 20" 2.16Ghz 2gb mem

[chipshot4me]

here are the steps I rec'd from Parallels Support:

1. Move the entire Parallels folder (.pvs and .hdd) to your Mac shared folder (for example, Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/).
2. In the Finder, right-click (Ctrl-click) the folder with the VM and choose Get Info from the pop-up menu.
3. In the Get Info window expand the Ownership&Permissions group.
4. Expand the Details group.
5. Set the access level for Others to Read&Write.
6. Click the Apply to the enclosed items button.
7. Now each user of your Mac is able to access the VMs stored in this folder.

Each user can double-click on the .pvs file within the Parallels folder (the vm image) and joint access is achieved. I was hoping for some help from the forum, but couldn't wait any longer and logged an online call with Tech support. They were terrific!!

[bobbyt]

here are the steps I rec'd from Parallels Support:

1. Move the entire Parallels folder (.pvs and .hdd) to your Mac shared folder (for example, Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/).
2. In the Finder, right-click (Ctrl-click) the folder with the VM and choose Get Info from the pop-up menu.
3. In the Get Info window expand the Ownership&Permissions group.
4. Expand the Details group.
5. Set the access level for Others to Read&Write.
6. Click the Apply to the enclosed items button.
7. Now each user of your Mac is able to access the VMs stored in this folder.

Each user can double-click on the .pvs file within the Parallels folder (the vm image) and joint access is achieved. I was hoping for some help from the forum, but couldn't wait any longer and logged an online call with Tech support. They were terrific!!

Some of us did try this approach, but it doesn't appear to work for everyone for some reason... I still get the same error after going though each file one by one in every one of my VM folders to verify they ended up with proper permissions...

[bobbyt]

I FIXED IT!!! :eek:

I changed group from "admin" to "wheel" (as all my other folders in shared had this permission), then applied to all and NOW IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[johngpt]

Well, I've tried what has been mentioned thus far.

From another thread, I was directed to the KB article.

From user/documents I moved the paralles folder to HD/users/shared. And I had changed permissions under Get Info>Details as mentioned in the KB article.

In my other user's account when parallels is launched, it opens and offers winxp as the vm, but when starting the vm, that notification appears saying that the app is "unable to access the virtual hard disk image file /Users/Shared/Parallels/Microsoft Windows XP/winxp.hdd. The file is missing, corrupted, or used by other application."

When I had gone back to my user account, and launched parallels, a notification saying that the file unattended.fdd had a problem (I can't recall exactly what as I've since moved the parallels folder back into my documents folder).



So, then I tried gwbarrow's idea, but ran into some complications there. In Finder, my Username/Library has no folder for parallels. However, hard drive/Library/Parallels exists. The problem is that this folder doesn't have what gwbarrow described.

User/Documents/Parallels/Microsoft Windows XP folder does have the .pvs, .fdd, .hdd files as well as the Windows Applications folder and Windows Disks folder. This of course is the parallels folder that I had tried moving to the Shared folder. When I moved that parallels folder back into the documents folder of my user account, parallels and winxp launched flawlessly.

So, I tried copying rather than moving that parallels folder to the Shared folder, and then copied it to the other user's Documents folder so it would resemble my user configuration. Launching parallels brings up the window for choosing winxp as the vm. Clicking the green start button again only brings forth the notification box described above.

BTW, manually clicking the .pvs file in the hard drive/Users/Shared/Parallels/Microsoft Windows XP folder (as mentioned in the KB article) also only calls out the dreaded notification about the .hdd file.

So, now I'm at a loss.

[johngpt]

At the other thread regarding this same conundrum, BobbyT replied saying that changing Group to wheel solved his problems with the shared folder.

That thread is:

http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=73514&posted=1#post73514

But, again, changing group to wheel in my case hasn't changed a thing.

I've binned the parallels folder from the Shared folder and it's now only in Users/John/Documents as when initially installed. And parallels and winxp vm work well from there.

I'm wondering, as it's SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED for whom this is all happening, if I should just bin parallels from my user account, and do the entire install of parallels and winxp from her account.

[johngpt]

Again I tried moving that parallels folder from Users/John/Documents to the Shared folder.

Then I moved it to my wife's documents, Users/Kim/Documents. Same old, same old.

Moved it back to Shared and in my account, from Shared, same old problem. Then I moved it back to my Documents. Works fine.

Could it be something about preferences?

:confused:

[ashleytan]

I think I have a workaround the workaround.

My set up is as follows:
-Parallels 2.5 build 3214
-No Parallels folder in Library folder
-Parallels folder in Documents folder

Instead of copying the Parallels folder to the second user's folder or moving it to the shared folder, I left the original folder alone. I simply set the original user's Documents folder (and all folders within) permissions to "Read and Write" by Others.

Note: Each user must completely shut down the VM so that the other user can use it. Suspending the VM **NOT** allow another user to restart it.

(Edited after I left out a critical "NOT" in the last sentence above.)

[johngpt]

I think I have a workaround the workaround.

My set up is as follows:
-Parallels 2.5 build 3214
-No Parallels folder in Library folder
-Parallels folder in Documents folder

Instead of copying the Parallels folder to the second user's folder or moving it to the shared folder, I left the original folder alone. I simply set the original user's Documents folder (and all folders within) permissions to "Read and Write" by Others.

Note: Each user must completely shut down the VM so that the other user can use it. Suspending the VM allow another user to restart it.
I just tried what I believe you have suggested, keeping the parallels vm folder in User/username/Documents, not copying it nor moving it even to hard drive/Users/Shared. Get Info for the whole User/username/Documents folder and changing in Details, permission for Others to Read & Write. My Get Info Ownership & Permissions lists Owner as R&W, Group (with username, not wheels) as R&W, and Others as R&W.

When I switched to my wife's account, attempting to launch parallels brought up the dialog for installing a vm, unlike other workarounds which would just bring up the notification about the .hdd file.

So, I went back to my Document's Get Info and changed Group to wheel, keeping everything else the same, and again, launching parallels from my wife's account brought up the offer to install a vm.

I must be doing something wrong.

:(

[johngpt]

Well, I got fed up with not being able to access winxp from my wife's account, so I uninstalled parallels from my account, binned the parallels folder from my documents folder, and reinstalled parallels and winxp home edition on my wife's account.

Things still aren't hunky dory in spanky park.

Now, because I was also logged in at my account, but not running anything but finder, there may have been too much happening for my 1G of ram. But in Kim's account, while looking at the parallels pdf manual, I noticed that winxp running in parallels kept rebooting.

I logged out of my account, and kept command tabbing back to parallels frequently. If I paid attention to winxp, it stayed running.

I was able to install her MS Office, but now I'm running into printer problems. Sometimes unplugging the usb and replugging fixes it. I had been able to print from wordpad, but so far, I'm not able to print from Word.

There's no problem printing from TextEdit in the mac os. I'll have to search the threads for relevant posts.

So far, I seem to be spending way too much time on this. God, how I hate microsoft.

[MisterFurious]

All well and good guys, but I have tried everything you have mentioned here, and have still not managed to get this to work.

To reiterate, I have tried the following:

1. Moved Users/User1/Documents/Parallels to Users/Shared
2. Using Get Info, I changed ownership of the folder from User1 to User2 (so User2 could be moved from the Shared folder to User2's Documents folder).
3. I changed the group permissions to read and write.
4. Another post had said they had some luck changing the "wheel" group permissions to read & write. I changed that, as well.
5. Finally, I changed Others' permissions to read & write and applied these new permissions to everything inside the folder.
6. Logged out as User1 and logged in as User2.
7. Whether I try to run the virtual machine from Users/Shared or Users/User2/Documents, I still get the error message:

"Virtual machine cannot be started because of the following problem:

"Parallels Desktop is unable to access the virtual hard disk image file /Users/User2/Documents/Parallels/Microsoft Windows XP/winxp.hdd. The file is missing, corrupted, or used by other application."

If I move the folder back to its original location in User1/Documents, it works perfectly fine, even though the owner is still User2.

Per some other posts on this issue, I have also tried using TextEdit to modify the path name for the virtual floppy disk in the PVS file, but that is not the hdd file.

I e-mailed Parallels support, but their only answer so far has been to update to the 4560 build (curious, since my 4128 build said I didn't need any updating). I did, and it still doesn't work.

Have I done anything wrong? Did I miss something? Does anybody have ANY other suggestions? I'm tired of waiting three days for a response from support, and I'm about ready to take Parallels back to the store for a refund and use Boot Camp instead.

[MisterFurious]

After exploring around my other options, I finally stumbled upon an acceptable solution.

With the virtual machine closed, I selected File>Clone and cloned the VM to the location I originally wanted (User2's Documents folder). I logged out of User1, logged into User2, and voila! Finally some love!

I'm surprised that no one has offered that as an option....

[johngpt]

After exploring around my other options, I finally stumbled upon an acceptable solution.

With the virtual machine closed, I selected File>Clone and cloned the VM to the location I originally wanted (User2's Documents folder). I logged out of User1, logged into User2, and voila! Finally some love!

I'm surprised that no one has offered that as an option....
Did this cloning process use up much more of the mac's hard drive space? Now that I've got parallels and winxp running in my wife's account, I might want it available in my account, but I wouldn't want to eat up much more hard drive space for it.

And I was able to print from Word in winxp vm by clicking on some printer of which I've never heard, listed in the print dialog. It's not the printer connected to the mac, but apparently, from reading other threads, parallels/win picked the closest appropriate drive and created this phantom printer. It seems to work. For now.

[Repallas]

I recently bought a MacBook Pro from a vendor who kindly installed *legal* copies of Parallels and Vista on my new machine before shipping it to me. He created a user account in which to install the software, and I migrated my separate user account from my G4 PB. I only want one User on the machine, so I thought I'd just relocate the vm to my account. Hence, my interest in this thread --- couldn't get it to work.

Finally after the last post suggested cloning, I had a solution. I can now run Vista in my user account after consuming 7GB of additional disk space. (Parallels Desktop is in the root level Applications folder, not a User folder.)

My question now is, can I delete the original source vm and the vendor-installed user account without losing my cloned vm? Issue is, while I'm confident the vendor installed legal copies of the SW, I don't have the installation media. If I blow it, I start over ($$$).

Thanks, MisterFurious, for the tip.

[mike1210]

what i did was

Image has to be moved to Users/Shared

permissions have to be changed also through terminal, I typed

cd users/shared/image/winxp.hdd

chmod 666 * <cr>

this needs to be done for the parallels files:)

[judy]

The configuration window has the location of the xxxxx.hdd file.
So if you get the message that it cannont find the .hdd file, click on hard disk 1 in the configuration window and change it to the proper path.

So, I have the proper path, and I have changed the permissions to read and write, but the second user still gets the message that Parallels wants to create a new image file.

edit
I just now double clicked on the .pvs file in the shared folder from the second users account, and it worked. Then I clicked on the parallels icon in the dock to start the app from there, and it worked too.

This was stated on the support page <http://kb.parallels.com/entry/27/119/>

I am using parallels 3, build 4560, July 17, and installed windoze 2000

Now my problem is to get working the windoze program that I installed. It is StrategyDesk from Ameritrade and it says there are files missing even though I installed it from a downloaded zipped file they provided.

[rhg247]

I've been dealing with this too. I tried all kinds of solutions, but none worked for me. The one user's idea of using chmod got me thinking though...

I wonder if this b0rked .pvs will launch under the root account. Yep! So it's definitely some mysterious permissions problem that's not being changed with Get Info from the Finder.

I went to my /user/documents directory and used terminal to change the permissions. One of the original posters got close, and maybe that worked for him, but this worked for me:

Open Terminal
su
chmod -R 777 /Users/myaccountnamehere/Documents/

After that it works like a champ. This assumes your parallels install is in your Documents folder, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work for the Users/Shared directory too.

[judy]

Today I decided to install xp into the shared folder. Got it all done in the administrator account, but again, the 2nd user could not access it. Parallels would start up, but it could not run xp.
So I repaired permissions, checked the configuration file for the proper location, and still it did not work for the second user.
I went back to the administrator account, changed all the permissions in the get info box to read and write for everyone. Also changed the group to wheel.

It works perfectly!

Then there was a strange situation - somehow, I had both xp and 2000 running. I quit 2000 but the icon was still in the dock. Then the finder went crazy, no dock, no icons on the desktop, etc. I restarted and 2000 was corrupt and would not run anymore. There was some message as to how I could fix it, but I don't need it anymore. I am happy that xp is running, and so is the program that I needed in the first place. So i threw out the 2000 installation.

[johngpt]

I recall at the macosxhints forum, reading a thread someone had posted, not long after parallels and the intel macs came out, showing several installations of window os's, from xp, to win98, and I believe win 3.1. The person posting showed screenshots of the various desktops.

Now, I don't know if the person had made these available to other users or if they were just available to the user in whose account they were installed.

If someone is interested they might go to that forum, search for that thread and try asking the original poster.

[cyclone]

Another datapoint, I can run Parallels from both my and my wife's account, but when she runs it she's required to enter the administrator (my) password. I think this is because I'm running off a Boot Camp partition, and so the Mac OS is forcing this for access to that partition. I've not been able to find a workaround...

Bill

[jsalda]

johngpt, I had the same problem with the corrupted .hdd file message. What I did to fix it was to go into the VM options and point the "Hard Drive" to the .hdd file in the /users/shared folder, likewise with the "Floppy Drive", point it to the .fdd file in the shared folder. I had to do this for each user and it worked great. Sorry this is not very specific, I don't have the machine that has Parallels in front of me at the moment.

[johngpt]

Thanks jsalda, but I've abandoned my attempts to have other users be able to access the winxp vm. I got the thing for my wife to use her ancient quicken app. It runs well in her user account. I'm leaving it alone, but your post may very well help others. Thank you for your help.

[mroseneo]

Ok here is the deal.

1. If you are making a new virtual machine make sure you check the options as you can put it in the shared directory by default.

2. If you already have a virtual machine, then go to the menu and select clone. Save it to the Users/Shared/Parallels directory.

3. If you don't plan on using the full functionality of Shared Folders, this should work for you now.

4. If you don't change the permissions, the Windows hard disk will not mount to the Mac OS X desktop for users who did not create the file. To fix this, go to get info for the entire VM folder.
Check the permissions and change the Owner to SYSTEM, and change the group to EVERYONE. Make sure they are read and write for all of them. Click the button at the bottom to apply changes.

Now, go into the folder and look at the hard disk file. Right click on it and examine the contents of the package. There are two files inside of this that did not apply the changes from before. Get info on both of them and change permissions as before. SYSTEM, and EVERYONE.

Please let me know if this works. It worked great for me.

Good Luck.

[SCCHelpdesk]

Thank you but, This did not work for me. I am using version 3.0 build 4560 on a Power Mac. The mac has the root account disabled, Admin account and two regular user accounts. Parallels Support and some other threads in here have said the issue is the Mac OSX. To mount & un-mount my Boot Camp partition requires Admin username & PW. Although you are "launching an application", this is actually mounting the Boot Camp Partition. Some others have suggested Parallels incorporate Mac's Keychain and that seems like it would do the trick. I have been all over the Parallel's KB and forum and will need to find the Terminal and SUDO commands to make this work for me in my enviroment (not sharing the VM, just want regular users (non-Admin level) to be able to "lauch" the app (as stated above, this involves mounting the partition that has WinXP). Overall the product works well out of the box for single user/single VM (using Admin credentials). Multi user/shared VM needs better documentation. By the way, the 2 calls I made to Tech Support (option 3 from the main number) were free. I did not signup or pay $29 for the per incident phone support, nor was I asked to. Kinda nice of them ;)

[Eru Ithildur]

SCCHelpdesk,
The issue is that administrative privilages are required to un-mount /mount the volumes. I don't really think that keychaining it would work, the information would have to be stored so that the user could access it, thus giving him access to the admin info. I am going to be phasing away from the BootCamp partitions because of this now that Parallels V. 3 has sorted a log of its bugs out. This is just the nature of a BootCamp partition.

The only way that was thought of when this was under a pretty deep discussion about three to six months ago was to grant privilages to the user for the partition only, but without giving it for the whole volume.