Slackware On Parallels Desktop
 

Hey all. I have been searching and searching for a guide to get slackware up and going on Parallels Desktop.

The setup is on one of the macbooks, using OSX as the host OS and running VM's for Win and Slack. Win is up and going, so i know i have the PD set up correctly.

Now i admit that i am a slackware noob, but i have at least accomplished getting it set up on my desktop and using it for the last year on and off for menial tasks. No matter how i try it on parallels however, it fails to boot.

I'm pretty sure that there are people out there that have accomplished this, but i haven't been able to find anything other than vague references.

Anyone pulled this off, or have a suggestion? Any advice is appreciated greatly.

Any messages you get which you could post?

Nope. The way parallels works if your not familiar with it, is that it opens up a virtual window to the guest OS. So i get a window that basically has a standard post screen. When im all done with the slackware install and i try to boot it up for the first time, the post screen just hangs at the very beginning, and doesn't proceed anywhere. No error messages, no attempt to boot, nothing. Now that i think about it, it is most likely a problem with the bootloader. On my desktop system i just use the boot floppy that the install asks to make to boot into lin, but the macbooks dont have a floppy drive. Im sure I set up the bootloader wrong, or parallels has a problem with it, but their forums have absolutely nothing about slackware. I think redhat is the only distro they talk about.

If Parallels works like VMWare, you can map the virtual floppy to a file on disk when starting the VM, so you could go for a boot diskette.

One other thing you could try is install grub instead of lilo. I actually had one machine where lilo wouldn't work, but grub did. You don't need to reinstall, just boot your VM with a LiveCD (i recommend RIP) and install grub.

Thanks, ill give it a closer look and see if i cant map that floppy.

Where did you put LILO at? Did you put it in the MBR or root? I'm running slackware now on my macbook pro using parallels so I can verify this works. Also what version of Parallels?

I tried putting lilo in the MBR, in Root, and using the bootdisk. I get an error message with all three. The parallels version is RC2, the slackware install is 10.2, and the macbook in question is the 2.0ghz.

I also succeeded in getting the floppy image created, and i made sure parallels is told to boot the VM with the floppy "in", but slack still doesn't like it.

Thats cool you got this working. I know that the problem is just something stupid im doing, the question is what.

Out of curiosity, what kernel are you using? I have been trying bare.i, which I realize is prob foolish because i don't know if the virtual hardware is all compatible with that. But i have kind of been running under the assumption that i could start there, and then once the os was running i could take a look at what "wasn't" working and find a more compatible choice.

-thx

problem resolved with the latest update of parallels. *closed*