40. (with egg)

I'm finally getting around to playing with Parallels Desktop for Mac, specifically the free release candidates for the next version. My geek-meter is rising with every moment. Here are some of the cool things and problems I found along the way. I'm not going to detail a complete install guide, but I will reference the ones I used and give credit where credit is due.

Windows XP on Parallels

The Parallels Release Candidate includes this nice feature: if you already have a Windows installation on your Mac from using Boot Camp, Parallels will let you run it in a virtual machine. This gives you the best of both worlds: a true hardware-accelerated Windows install for games (why else?) that you can also fire up in Parallels when you want to see if your CSS works in IE6 how badly your CSS is broken in IE6.

Problems with Windows XP on Parallels

Parallels wouldn't start my Boot Camp image immediately, instead giving me this error:

Parallels Desktop cannot find necessary drivers to configure your Boot Camp partition. Please refer to Help> Parallels Desktop Help>Using Boot Camp Windows XP Installation for troubleshooting*

... and so I did. Help> Parallels Desktop Help>Using Boot Camp Windows XP Installation suggested the following:

1. Boot into Windows XP via Boot Camp
2. Insert Microsoft Windows XP installation disc which was used for this Windows XP installation.
3. Locate the folder i368 on the disc and open it. Copy the following files: driver.cab and any of spN.cab files (sp1.cab or sp2.cab, etc depending on service package installed) to the folder: C:\WIndows\Driver Cache\i386.*

... and so I did. The virtual machine worked fine the next time I ran it, no problems.

Ubuntu Linux on Parallels

Nothing very exciting here. When creating the virtual machine, I created a "custom" installation of "Linux/Other Linux kernel 2.6"; this worked fine (mostly... keep reading.) Download yourself an ISO disk image from Ubuntu's download site or bittorrent one. I'm using Dapper Drake (6.06 with Long Term Support). When prompted to "Insert Linux Kernel 2.6 installation CD," choose "More Options" and specify the location of your downloaded ISO.

Problems with Ubuntu Linux on Parallels

I had to install it twice for some reason, which means that I had to delete the first virtual machine I crated and start from scratch. There was some kind of fatal error that I didn't pay attention to at the time, and thus I cannot tell you what it was; now unhelpful of me.

Next up: setting up the virtual machines for Ruby on Rails development.

*Text is most likely © Parallels. Hopefully they will be nice and let me help people help themselves and also sell more of their product.