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WizOSX · Nov 27, 2011, 10:14 AM

I've read a few references recently to the fact that you can run Lion in Parallels from Snow Leopard. Has anyone tried this? Is Lion fast enough to be reasonably usable? Specifically, if you boot from SL, have Lion installed on another partition and run Lion in Parallels does this work well?

WizOSX · Nov 27, 2011, 07:07 PM

Alternatively, has anyone tried this:

osxdaily.com/2011/11/17/install-run-mac-os-x-10-6-snow-leopard-in-virtual-machine-on-lion/

I was under the impression that you couldn't run SL virtually inside Lion but this says you can do it easily. Am I missing something?

Cold Warrior · Nov 27, 2011, 07:23 PM

In that article, they're using virtualbox and apparently there are a couple tricks to it, one of which is selecting os x server as the guest OS, even if it's os x client.

WizOSX · Nov 27, 2011, 07:45 PM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

In that article, they're using virtualbox and apparently there are a couple tricks to it, one of which is selecting os x server as the guest OS, even if it's os x client.

They claim in the article that this should work just as well in Parallels but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Waragainstsleep · Nov 27, 2011, 07:47 PM

Apparently you can run Snow Leopard in VMWare Fusion 4.1 by accident. You need to grab a copy now before they patch it, assuming they haven't already.

As for running Lion on Snow Leopard, if you have VMWare 4.1 or Parallels 7 (I'm assuming they are supported on 10.6.X), then you should be able to run a virtual Lion if you want. Using SL as the host OS shouldn't really affect the speed of the VM or much else really. Should run just fine.

Cold Warrior · Nov 27, 2011, 08:14 PM

Yeah. They've already patched fusion. I'm not updating though, that's the only thing they 'fixed.'

WizOSX · Nov 27, 2011, 08:30 PM

Either SL within Lion or vice versa will effectively do what I want. However, booting in Lion would be my preferred approach because I want to have Lion as the main OS and only use SL when needed (rather than have to boot SL every time).

It seems to me the following should work (I currently have Lion and only one partition on my HD):
1) Create a second partition on my hard drive and install SL on it in the usual way.
2) Install VirtualBox in Lion and follow the trick in the OsXdaily link. It shouldn't matter if SL is already installed when I create the VM. Am I right?
3) Any time I boot in SL, use Parallels to run Lion. Any time I boot in Lion, use VB to run SL.

Can anyone see any problems with that plan?

FireWire · Nov 27, 2011, 11:38 PM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

Yeah. They've already patched fusion. I'm not updating though, that's the only thing they 'fixed.'

What? they're doing it on purpose? I thought Apple said you couldn't, but that was a software (and EULA) limitation, not something that could be done but prevented intentionnaly! (and that software developers had to enforce explicitly).

besson3c · Nov 28, 2011, 12:31 AM

Any OS X OS is going to be crippled in performance in video, disk, and network performance. The guest features such as mouse integration, auto screen resolution setting, and clipboard sharing will probably not work either unless there is an OS X package provided by the VM vendor you can install to gain these features.

WizOSX · Dec 1, 2011, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by WizOSX

Either SL within Lion or vice versa will effectively do what I want. However, booting in Lion would be my preferred approach because I want to have Lion as the main OS and only use SL when needed (rather than have to boot SL every time).

It seems to me the following should work (I currently have Lion and only one partition on my HD):
1) Create a second partition on my hard drive and install SL on it in the usual way.
2) Install VirtualBox in Lion and follow the trick in the OsXdaily link. It shouldn't matter if SL is already installed when I create the VM. Am I right?
3) Any time I boot in SL, use Parallels to run Lion. Any time I boot in Lion, use VB to run SL.

Can anyone see any problems with that plan?

A few problems with my plan:

I've been trying VirtualBox with SL inside Lion for the past few days. There are goods and bads.
The goods: it does work. SL boots up quite well and is reasonable fast. I was able to load an old version of Photoshop CS and Canvas and both worked fine. But they were both were loaded from files, not from physical CD.
The bads: VirtualBox has lots of difficulties with external devices. Printing is fine but connecting USB drives and even internal CDs is very much hit and miss. This makes loading software like MS Office 2004 (which is the main program I want running) problematic. Also the OsX version of VirtualBox limits resolution to 1024x768. It also freezes more often than I would like.
So in the end, I'm not sure it I'll keep with it.

Another problem with my plan above is that, according to Parallels website you cannot run Lion within SL using Parallels.

besson3c · Dec 1, 2011, 10:11 PM

WizOSX: you'll the guest additions for USB support (I think), shared folder support, and resolution switching above 1024 x 768. I'm not sure about CD support, but I'm not surprised that you'd have problems with that.

We'll to wait until the guest additions are available for OS X. What I don't know is whether this is on Virtualbox to write, or whether this is something that Apple would have to help with in providing source code that can be used. I have a feeling it's the latter.