Since installing the latest version of Parallels Desktop for Mac (build 1970) the automatic sleep on my MacPro and MacBook Pro (both Intel) does not work anymore. When un-installing Parallels, everything is fine again. It appears that Parallels launches a background job upon startup (regardless of one is actually using Parallels): /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/pvsnatd It seems to consume some CPU time, so could this be the problem? Any advise? I contacted Parallels support a few days ago, but there has not been any response. Axel Brunger
I tried deleting the NAT server by killing the process. Still, the automatic sleep does not work. It only starts working again after entirely un-installing Parallels (using the Parallels un-install script). I often do syncs over slow networks, so I need the automatic sleep option in order to shut the system down after the sync is complete. So far, Parallels has not responded to the bug report that I submitted over a week ago. Poor support! Is there an alternative product to Parallels? I only occasionally use it. Axel Brunger
Right, and I think pvsnatd is specifically part of Parallels' new "Shared Networking" feature, which seems to have popped up in the latest release without the significant beta testing cycle to which the company has subjected the other features of its product. So I'm not surprised that it causes this problem (which I've also noticed). In other news, pvsnatd has been known to crash on wakeup, which makes networking stop working for VMs using Shared Networking. I've submitted a stack trace for the latter problem, and the company has responded that the problem will be fixed in the next version. If they fix that crash-on-wakeup bug, hopefully they'll fix this don't-let-sleep bug as well.
I just figured out a work-around. I turned off Sharing in the Mac OSX System-Preference -> Sharing menu. Then I used the "Sharing" option in the Parallels Network Adpater options. Apparently, the 1970 built does not require the use of Sharing in the Apple system preference anymore. By turning off this option, the automatic sleep works just fine and I can still access the Internet from within the Parallels virual machine.
I have Internet connection sharing turned off (I have never enabled it), but my MacBook Pro still doesn't always go to sleep when I close it. It usually does go to sleep, but occasionally I have to select "Sleep" from the Apple menu to make it sleep. I haven't noticed anything different about those occasions, so it's unclear why the problem is intermittent.
