Is Drag-drop or automated install possible?

C

che_guevara

Bit poster
We want to install Parallels Desktop on multiple machines without need for users to click through Parallels installer. Can it be done?

If we simply copy binaries to a different Mac, Parallels won't launch and shows following message box:
"Parallels Desktop is unable to operate properly since it cannot communicate with one of its drivers... blah blah blah".

Thanks much!
 
you may have a registration issue
ask support about multiple licences

I think you need to run the installer on each machine to set paths to the invisible files

Obviously the VM files are transportable
but I would do it by cloning from an external hard disk - again to allow parallels to set the paths

If Windows you will need multiple licenses
you may get better help after the week end

this is just a guess or two

Hugh W
 
I'm hoping that Parallels support visits these forums as well

Right now I'm experimenting with a free trial single license, but in future we are going to buy Parallels and Windows licenses for all the users. I don't think it is a matter of license.
Parallels complain about drivers not being installed.

If drag-n-drop installation is not possible, it would be nice to have Parallels bring up the installer on the first run after drag-n-drop installation. Our user scenario is this:
1) Parallels Desktop.app and Virtual Machine is pushed to users' computers automatically
2) at some point Parallels is automatically (through command line) is launched and asked to open VM from step (1).
 
Hello,

Che_guevara, such mechanism is not provided by Parallels Desktop.
However the installer used by Parallels is a standard Mac OS installer so you can probably find a way to get the result you need by the standard Mac OS means.
If you will, please share your experience.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
Last edited:
Automated install

We also have a need for automating the Parallels Desktop installation. As mentioned in this thread it isn't supported by the installer but you can bend the installer to your will. Here's how:

These instructions are for Parallels Desktop 3.0 build 5584. Later builds will probably function the same way but I'll give a little background info in case some future tweaking is required.

Basically inside the installer bundle are a couple of programs that are used for showing alerts to the installer user. They are at Contents/Resources/pAlert.app and Contents/Resources/pbAlert.app. You can just replace the executables with shell scripts that return 0 (no error) and no alerts will be presented. Here's how:

- mount the Parallels disk image (Parallels-Desktop-5584-Mac-en.dmg)
- copy the "Install Parallels Desktop.pkg" file from the disk image to your Desktop
- open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
- in the Terminal window type the following three commands:

cd ~/Desktop

perl -e 'print "#!/bin/bash\nexit 0"' > "Install Parallels Desktop.pkg/Contents/Resources/pAlert.app/Contents/MacOS/pAlert"

perl -e 'print "#!/bin/bash\nexit 0"' > "Install Parallels Desktop.pkg/Contents/Resources/pbAlert.app/Contents/MacOS/pAlert"

- Now control-click on the "Install Parallels Desktop.pkg" file and create a zip file from it (choose "Compress Install Parallels Desktop.pkg" from the menu).
- Rename the zipfile to something useful like "install_parallels_desktop_3.0_5584_no_prompts.zip"

- The zipfile you've created can now be used for an automated Parallels install. Here's how to do it (you may want to create script):

- copy the zipfile via scp or some other mechanism to the target machine's /tmp folder
- on the target machine ssh in, use Terminal, or run a script that does:

# make sure none of the parallels programs are running if already installed.
# how you do this is up to you (kill Parallels Desktop.app comes to mind ;-)

cd /tmp
ditto -xk install_parallels_desktop_3.0_5584_no_prompts.zip .
sudo installer -pkg "Install Parallels Desktop.pkg" -target /
reboot

There ya go.

-b
 
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