Renaming a virtual machine

[richardm]

I've attempted at times over the years to rename my vm but always caused myself problems. Before attempting to do so again, I vowed to ask for advice first.

Is there someone who can tell me precisely what steps are necessary and sufficient to properly rename a vm?

Thanks for your consideration.

Parallels Desktop 3/5608, XP SP2, OSX 10.4.11, Intel Mac Core Duo

[John@Parallels]

Use VM cloning as described in Parallels Desktop for Mac user guide from http://www.parallels.com/en/download...User_Guide.pdf on page 243

[richardm]

John, thanks for your reply. In fact, I do have (barely) enough space on my internal hd to clone my 52GB VM. but hoped there would be a less strenuous way to accomplish renaming--something along the lines of renaming certain key files/folders.

However, if you are confidant that cloning is the only necessary and sufficient way to do it, I'll give it a try. Please let me know. Thanks.

[John@Parallels]

After cloning you can delete old VM, actually otherwise you need also to change a lot of hidden files

[richardm]

John, I was afraid that might be the case. Some related questions:

1. Can you suggest any practical way that I could learn how to identify those files and how to make the necessary changes to those hidden files?

2. Is there a certain minimum amount of extra "working space", in addition to the doubling space, that must be available beforehand in order to successfully clone the VM. In my situation, a simple doubling would just about fully occupy the drive.

3. What leads me to my wish to rename the VM is that PD--for reasons not known to me--occassionally adds a digit to the existing name. My current VM "Clone A 1 2 1" was initially just "Clone A". I didn't add any numbers, not intentionally at least. Perhaps you can guess what I do that precipitates this name growth so that I can try to avoid causing that situation in the future?

Thanks for your advice.

[John@Parallels]

1. Can you suggest any practical way that I could learn how to identify those files and how to make the necessary changes to those hidden files?

in Terminal perform following command
cd Documents
rm -rf .parallels-vm-directory

2. Is there a certain minimum amount of extra "working space", in addition to the doubling space, that must be available beforehand in order to successfully clone the VM. In my situation, a simple doubling would just about fully occupy the drive.

VM folder size + VM memory+2GB(approximate)

[richardm]

Thanks, John. I'll look into the terminal stuff. I suspect this may take a while.

[RustyZ]

I would STRONGLY recommend you back up your VM to another location before attempting this. Perhaps I was just lucky and you might lose your entire VM. A backup should be part of your normal workflow all the time with virtualization anyway so... get that 2TB external drive and make a backup.

I thought I'd give a rename a try after Parallels renamed my VM "my vmname (1)".
Be sure to shut down your VM normally

In Terminal, cd to the directory containing your VM and execute a mv

mv Windows\ 7\ x64\ (1).pvm Windows\ 7\ x64.pvm

Then navigate into that directory "cd Windows\ 7\ x64.pvm"

Launch Parallels, view Virtual Machine List. remove your virtual machine, choosing to KEEP the files

Double click on the VM from the finder

Now, shut it down.

View VM List again, rename the VM by right clicking and choosing "configure"