Paul Shadwell RTFM

OS X 10.5 Running in VMware Fusion

Now it's easy to install Mac OS X Server 10.5 on a virtual machine using VMware Fusion, but it's not quite so easy to do the same with the normal "Desktop" version. This is because of the licensing imposed by Apple. At least they are now open to allowing OS X Server to be virtualised and this is great news for those of us who want to test those environments. However, testing generally also requires the Desktop to be virtualised also, it just makes life so much easier (and cheaper of course) to setup, install, test and break down a virtual environment than it is to do the same in hardware.

So I've been hunting around for a while for the solution. Today I found the solution on another blog.
The blog illustrates how to install OS X 10.4 (Tiger) as a virtual machine. There was a mention in the comments that this would work for Leopard so I thought I'd give it a try. I was successful! There were a couple of modifications I had to make but other than that the instructions can be followed to the letter on 10.5 as well.

Rather than plagiarise my fellow bloggers hard work I'll just give you the link. Sven G's Post

Below are my updates to Sven G's post:

2. The mounted VM HD shows up on the Desktop as Macintosh HD which is of course the same name as the normal Macintosh HD (unless you renamed it of course). If this is the case then the OS will see the mounted drive as Macintosh HD 1.
3. You will need to show hidden files and folders to navigate to the OSInstall.mpkg. I used Path Finder to do this.
6. Remember to change the Macintosh HD to the drive name that shows up in the OS. You can find this by going to terminal and typing the following:

cd /Volumes
ls -al

You will then see a list of the mounted drives.

7. Same as step 6.

You can now install the VMware Tools as normal.
I am now testing the updates to 10.5.6.

My Podcast Debuts

Some people have been asking me about my guest appearances on podcasts so here are the episodes of the International Mac Podcast I have appeared on so far and the Mac 20 Questions.

IMP Live 025 Swiss Paul
IMP Live 029 Terms & Conditions Apply
IMP Live 033 The Clone Wars

Mac20Q PodCast 11

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

If you'd like me to appear on your podcast just drop me an email or contact me via Twitter.

Todays Challenge

Today has been a long day and I don't feel as though I achieved much.

Issues today included, an ActiveX control not working for one user
A .eml file giving strange behaviour when opening. in fact it never opens but alternates between Downloading and Done very quickly.
SharePoint apparently running slowly.
The last one I have tracked down to an issue with the clients viewing the SharePoint pages. Not all the PCs had the same issue.
I now have to dig deeper to find out what the issues are that's causing these failures.

Just a short and sweet blog this evening as I am cream crackered.

Good night and speak to you again tomorrow.

The Challenge: Blog Every Day for a Month

The great Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline set himself a goal last week of blogging every day for 30 days. I was thinking of doing something similar and as today (now yesterday) is (or was) the 1st of March, I would blog every day for the month of March.

My plan is to write something useful and/or thought provoking for each day. So my Sunday was mostly spent fighting with a Windows Vista guest virtual machine on my Mac Pro. I hadn't run it for a while and needed to do some testing for my main client. I couldn't login, it looked like although I had not set a password for the user account I was using, the account had expired and I could no longer use the VM.

I contemplated building a new VM but thought that if this has happened to me it has bound to have happened to others too. So I started to investigate how to solve the problem. I solved it and then proceeded to take snapshots of every step I took to fix it. As usual I used the internet to find the answers and as usual the information was hard to find and burried in forums. In this case the Fusion forums on VMware's website. So, to cut a long story short, it's 2:40am and I have all the screen-shots ready but now I have to go and sleep.

In my younger days I used to love writing, in my school days I did reasonably well in English but over the years it's become more and more of a chore especially when you have to do it, I'm an IT guy and writing documentation is a pet hate of mine (I know, it's common problem).

Still, hopefully, forcing myself to do this everyday will be, not just of benefit to myself, but to others too. I already have a backlog of blog entries, I'm sure a few of you are still waiting for my online accounting apps tests. I'm not great at GTD but I have to force myself and lets see if I can achieve it. It's a huge challenge and I want to succeed. OK so the first day was a "FAIL" but I hope to do better from now on. So watch this space and if you can offer any encouragement or ideas to help me overcome my laziness and manyana attitude, I would love to hear from you.

Oh! and I will blog the password reset solution, promise.