Accessing a VM from a different account

Hi again,

Just wanted to know if there's a way to access a virtual machine from a different user's account. I have the path to the .hdd file shared to the other user, but when I'm logged in as them and navigate to that path, it says the .hdd file is corrupted and won't open it. If I'm logged in as myself, it works just fine. Any thoughts?

Nate

 

Well, last time I tried this I discovered that if the 'original' vm user just suspended the vm, then ownership of the hdd will say with that user. Therefore when your new user attempts to access it, they are denied access.

If the first user "turns off" the vm, other users should be good to go.

I don't know if more recent builds are the same .... I'm using V3.0 5160 and it works there.

Hope this helps...

Lee

 

Thanks, here's some more info too

Thanks for the reply!

I did a little more searching on Parallels website and found the information I was looking for. The thing I had missed before was that when sharing a .hdd file to another user on the same computer, you have to "right"-click (or whatever your secondary click function on your mac is) the .hdd file and "Open the contents of packge." Then once opened, there are 2 files there, can't remember their names right now, but I'm at home, anyways, set the permissions for those files as well to be shared to the other user.

Reboot (I did this anyway, although I don't think it's necessary) and log in as the alternate user, and the .hdd is no longer corrupted. I just created a new virtual machine for the alternate user, and pointed it's HDD to the .hdd file I just set the permissions on and it works like a charm. Now 2 users can share the same .hdd, and log into the same VM as 2 separate users.

Cheers!

 

Yep, just make sure that full permissions are granted on the file to whatever user you want to access it... That is key.