How can I clone a VM using Mac OS sonoma as guest ?

Discussion in 'Parallels Desktop on a Mac with Apple silicon' started by _Q_, Oct 18, 2023.

  1. _Q_

    _Q_ Bit poster

    Messages:
    7
    Hi,
    I'd like to clone one my existing VMs using MAC OS Sonoma as guest. The host is a Sonoma OS running on a MBP M2.

    On the "File" menu, the "Clone" option doesn't appear when using this VM. (t appears on my Linux and Windows VMs tho). I've tried to clone the MAC OS VM with the PRLCTL command and got this error:

    $>prlctl clone MacDev0 --name MacDev0-1
    >Clone the MacDev0 VM to VM MacDev0-1...
    >
    >Failed to clone the VM: The operation failed. To perform this operation, you must enter the host OS administrator's credentials.
    >
    $> sudo prlctl clone MacDev0 --name MacDev0-1
    > Failed to get VM config: The virtual machine could not be found. The virtual machine is not registered in the virtual machine directory on your Mac.

    Any ideas how to clone this MAC OS Sonoma guest VM ?

    Thanks a lot!
     
  2. Mikhail Ushakov

    Mikhail Ushakov Parallels Team

    Messages:
    545
    Thanks, Matthew! Upon duplicating it, double-click the new VM to register it in the Control Center.
     
  3. Mikhail Ushakov

    Mikhail Ushakov Parallels Team

    Messages:
    545
    Alternatively, you can clone it from Terminal as shown below (in your example you should've either used the VM UUID or put the VM name into ""):
    upload_2023-10-19_10-49-3.png
     
    _Q_ likes this.
  4. _Q_

    _Q_ Bit poster

    Messages:
    7
    Thanks a lot guys; very useful info. I got it to work using the "" around the VM names but before that, I had to change the security settings for "clone" in the Preference menu in the Parallel Control center. I had to untick "require password for clone" , then I cloned it, and after the cloning was done, I ticked again "require password for clone" . The PRLCTL command is not prompting for the password when that setting is configured.

    When running "prlctl list -a " as a normal user i got the entire list of VMs. When running the same command with sudo "sudo prlctl list -a" , result was blank.

    So, the prlctl command must be run as the normal user and in case of "require password for" settings, need to untick them manually. Would be nice if PRLCTL asks for that password tho.
     
  5. Mikhail Ushakov

    Mikhail Ushakov Parallels Team

    Messages:
    545
    Good catch! Reproduced locally as well and reported to our Engineering team. Thanks a lot for bringing this up!
     
    _Q_ likes this.

Share This Page