Warning! Do not buy Parallels if you want to run Linux in it with > 512MB!

Discussion in 'Linux Virtual Machine' started by ZaphodX, Feb 8, 2008.

  1. ZaphodX

    ZaphodX Bit poster

    Messages:
    3
    Hello!

    I had a hard time installing Ubuntu 7.10 with Parallels running on a MAC.
    It all resulted from setting the memory of the guest system to more than 512MB.

    After learning that Parallels does not support more than 512MB memory with Linux as a guest system, I was really disappointed. If I knews this restriction beforehand, I would have bought VMWare Fusion (which is even cheaper) instead of Parallels.

    Reading through several forums, I learned that this problem exists for a looong time now.

    Is Parallels to overcome this restriction in the near future, or should I dump it and switch to VMWare?
     
  2. Xenos

    Xenos Parallels Team

    Messages:
    1,547
    Hello ZaphodX,

    Parallels does not support more than 512MB memory with some Linux Guest OS. Such is current design limitation. Our apologies.

    Please avoid direct advertising of third-party software on Parallels Forum.

    Best regards,
    Xenos
     
  3. ZaphodX

    ZaphodX Bit poster

    Messages:
    3
    Hello Xenos,

    I'm sorry for my being offensive.

    The reason for this post was, that I was in need for a VM on my MAC to be able to run both Windows and Linux on it, doing multi-platform development.

    The datasheet for Parallels Desktop 3.0 says "Run Mac OSX, Windows, OS/2, Solaris and any distribution of Linux simultaneously - without rebooting."
    And further more "Requirements: Linux Distributions - Debian, ..., Ubuntu, ...
    Memory - Up to 2 GB RAM available for guest operating system"

    There is no statement about a memory limitation on some Linux distros.

    Since Ubuntu is becoming increasingly popular, I assumed that there would be no problems using it with Parallels. Because of Parallels popularity on OS X, I have swiched from another third-party VM to it and now I am really dissapointed, because Parallels seems to focus on running Windows as a guest system.

    But: Parallels is running amazingly fast. My only complaint is this incompatibility with Linux running with more than 512 MB. I would not have been disappointed, if this limitation had been stated in the data sheet.

    I hope that you will overcome this problem in the future either by giving this information to your customers before they buy this product or by making it compatible with recent Linux kernels.

    Regards
    Zaph
     
  4. Xenos

    Xenos Parallels Team

    Messages:
    1,547
    Zaph, I will deliver your request to our developers and to marketing department. Thank you for your report.

    Best regards,
    Xenos
     
  5. Patrick Torre

    Patrick Torre Bit poster

    Messages:
    5
    I've been able to get around this limitation by installing the Ubuntu linux-virtual kernel.

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get linux-virtual

    Once you're booting with that kernel, you should be able to set your memory 1024M without a kernel panic on boot. This should be in the FAQ.
     
  6. Xenos

    Xenos Parallels Team

    Messages:
    1,547
    Hello Patrick Torre,

    Thank you for the idea. We are testing this workaround and will include it in FAQ as soon as it's reproduced in-house.

    Best regards,
    Xenos
     
  7. ZaphodX

    ZaphodX Bit poster

    Messages:
    3
    Sounds great. Thanks for this idea, Torre.
     
  8. Kaveman

    Kaveman Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Report?

    Well, did anyone else have success with the virtual kernal? Has this been added to the FAQ? I couldn't find it.
     
  9. tgall

    tgall Bit poster

    Messages:
    3
    512m Huh?

    I've been able to run more than 512Meg on my linux partitions just fine. This is running both fedora 8 as well as on gentoo.

    cat /proc/meminfo

    [tgall@badhat ~]$ cat /proc/meminfo
    MemTotal: 774912 kB
    MemFree: 335752 kB
    Buffers: 13900 kB

    Regards,

    Tom
     
  10. MaximS

    MaximS Forum Maven

    Messages:
    715
    >512Mb solution

    This problem was solved here.
     

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