Virtual machines and OS X

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Monday November 17 2014 11:08:55 Craig Treleaven wrote:

> I tried VirtualBox without success.  Parallels Desktop 9 has worked 
> well for me.  All I want to do is use MacPorts in the VM's to test 
> building/installing/testing software (MythTV) under different OS 
> versions.

What is your host OS?

> There is 10.6 Server and 10.6 (not Server, aka 'Client').  10.6 

Parallels checks the type of install at boot time, and refuses to proceed if it's not Server.
However, whether that's the case depends on the presence of a single file, so it's *very* easy to turn any 10.6 install into Server, or vice-versa.

> Donno, I've got 10.6 Server and 10.9 VM's.  Parallels Desktop 
> provides a shared folder between the host and each guest but I don't 
> think that is what you are talking about.

As Ryan already assumed, network shares appear to be implemented as some kind of network share. VIrtualBox follows the same technique.
I find that Parallels' shared folder feature is very unreliable on a 10.6 host, so I deactivated it and use good ole AppleShare from inside the VM to mount certain shares from the host. That has the advantage that they appear under /Volumes, too.
And my 10.9 VM mounts a complete external disk as an external device.

> driver lacks some necessary feature.  Does anyone have a solution for 
> sharing one port tree amongst various VM instances?  I'd like to be 
> able to work on building in one VM and then test deployment in 
> another without having to commit/sync a bunch of different trees.

My MacPorts tree is actually on that external disk. Works just fine, and I can access the disk's contents without having to fire up the VM.

René