Parallel Tools Installed? Quick Visual Indicator

T

TaoMacGuy

Junior Member
Is this feature already there and I'm just missing it?

I'd love to see a quick visual indicator telling me whether or not the Parallels Tools have been installed in a VM. As far as I can tell now, I have to be logged into Windows and drill down to see if the Tools folder and tools are there.

A nice "toolsy" icon in the console window would be great!

Thanks guys (I'm seriously looking forward to future beta releases and the GM when it comes out -- I've already pre-ordered the Mac OS X version!)
 
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The tools are a "once off" install.

Make a habit of doing it at the begining, then you just have to remember that you have.
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Here's the potential problem:

Client "A" calls me into their site. Just-fired incompetent administrator has set up a bunch of VMs. I want to easily and quickly see of Parallels Tools have been installed.

My preferrred method of doing this VM-creating thing is to make a first VM for each guest OS, get it right (i.e. install Tools, patches, etc.). Turn it off and "park it" on the shelf as a sort of template. Deploy others from there, making changes as required.
 
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I hadn't thought about the incompetent admin. Lucky he had enough smarts to install Parallels. On the bright side, you would be looking at a bit more chargeable time.

I like your install idea. On the surface. What troubles me is the awful consistency of Windwoes to get all confused after major hardware changes. Usually requiring a repair or reinstall.
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constant said:
I hadn't thought about the incompetent admin. Lucky he had enough smarts to install Parallels. On the bright side, you would be looking at a bit more chargeable time.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, I've made a decent living in the past due to the gross incompetence of my clients. ;)

constant said:
I like your install idea. On the surface. What troubles me is the awful consistency of Windwoes to get all confused after major hardware changes. Usually requiring a repair or reinstall.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The good news is that virtualization done right (and Parallels is well on the way down this road already) minimzes (if not elmimnates) this problem.

In a VM, RAM, CPU, disk, the network are all virtual. If you change the underlying hard drives on the host system, for example, the VM shouldn't know or care. Its "disk" is still in a file on the host system and the drivers for said "disk" are still the same virtual drivers as before.

This particular problem can be seriously mitigated by good virtualization -- one of the great benefits of VMs IMHO. But I digress and wander off topic for this forum. :o
 
No, really, how to know? (for Ubunto 7.10, too)

OK, all this consideration of how much you can charge aside, I do need to know how to tell if Parallels Tools are installed. I may be that incompetent admin (I'm certainly not an experienced Linux admin yet), but I'm not hiring the original poster. :-)

The reason I don't know is that every time I install Parallels Tools for Linux, the display (only the display?) crashes. Once, but only once, I got a success message before that happened.

In Windows XP, a successful Parallels Tools (always?) results in a "Parallels Tools" item in the All Programs menu. How about in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)? I don't see any parallels tools items, but I don't think Linux gets all that many tools, and probably nothing that gets settings, so maybe there just aren't any control panels.

Anyway, how to tell? I can move the mouse from Ubuntu to Mac without having to escape the vm window; I have a choice of screen resolutions including 1280x1024... are those the key features provided?

thanks,
MG
 
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