Modifying Linux guest default settings?

Discussion in 'Linux Virtual Machine' started by MichaelJ13, Jun 9, 2017.

  1. MichaelJ13

    MichaelJ13 Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    I'm a professional Linux software developer who uses a MacBook Pro as my main desktop, and I do some of my embedded development and testing in Linux guest VMs running on my Mac. I'm a new user of "Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac Pro Edition," and I purchased Parallels because I was hoping for a better user experience than VirtualBox. However, I'm having trouble figuring out how to make it easier to configure my new VMs.

    First of all, I will probably NEVER want to run any sort of Linux desktop within a Linux guest. I want to run Linux guest VMs for embedded systems-level C software development and testing, and I'm solely using "server" installs of Linux, and I do everything through OpenSSH and the command line.

    I've created about four VMs so far, and I'm a bit frustrated by Parallel's focus on graphical desktops. The predominance of Windows icons is already annoying to a devoted UNIX user like myself, but what really irritates me is having to go through the configuration for each and every new VM to make the same repetitive configuration changes. Is there any way to automate this, and overwrite the "standard" defaults?

    For instance, here's a list of everything I currently have to do manually:
    1. Go into "Options->Sharing" and add my custom shared folder that I use for transferring files to/from the Linux guests. I turn off "Shared Cloud" and "SmartMount", since it makes no sense for my situation.
    2. Go into "Options->Applications" and turn off "Share Linux Applications with Mac," and then click the silly, "Are you sure?" window. Of course I'm sure! I also disable, "Allow apps to switch to full-screen," because I don't have graphical applications on my Linux guests.
    3. I also go into "Options->More Options" and disable Apple Remote, since it makes no sense with an embedded Linux guest OS.
    4. Under hardware, I always adjust the CPU, memory, and graphical settings, as well as disabling printing and the "Share Mac camera with Linux" setting. Tweaking the CPU, disk, and memory is to be expected, but I will NEVER want to share my Mac's camera with a Linux guest.
    I realize that in theory, I could create just one basic "bare-bones" Linux guest, and then clone that VM as needed, but that's frustrating when you're trying to work with multiple versions of multiple Linux distributions, e.g., Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 6, Debian 7, CentOS 7, etc. I'd much rather just tell it to install from a Linux ISO and have Parallels Desktop know *MY* preferred "default" Linux guest settings. I do see a setting for "restore defaults," but that just seems to reset everything back to the "Parallels default," which is not appropriate for my situation. I do not see a way to create a new "default," or better yet, just have multiple pre-canned configurations for Linux.

    I also noticed the "Isolate Linux from Mac" feature under Security, which would admittedly be useful in some cases. However, I do want to keep one single shared folder for transferring stuff back and forth, and I do like having the clipboard shared. However, I may start using this method, and just always use terminal windows for access, and use "rsync" for copying files to/from my Mac over SSH.

    Am I missing something? I had hoped that Parallels Desktop Pro would be suitable for my situation, but if there's no way to improve the creation of new guests with less manual interaction, I may just return to VirtualBox.

    Thanks...
    Michael


    P.S. This nag screen is super annoying, and almost insulting. I'm a professional, which is why I bought the PRO edition. I know what I'm doing. o_O
    Screen Shot 2017-06-09 at 10.35.40.png
     
  2. rkulikov

    rkulikov Parallels Developers

    Messages:
    313
    > Is there any way to automate this, and overwrite the "standard" defaults?
    Parallels Desktop for Mac is shipped with prlctl(8) command-line utility. With it you can script most of virtual machine features and options. For more general VM management one may utilize Vagrant with "vagrant-parallels" plugin (http://parallels.github.io/vagrant-parallels/).
     
    MichaelJ13 likes this.
  3. MichaelJ13

    MichaelJ13 Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Thank you...this looks promising as a starting point.
     

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