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MustBJones
Contributor
Contributor

Running 10.6 Snow Leopard client in Fusion?

Can Fusion run 10.6 client?  The FAQ mentions the Server version?  Can it run the client from a different partition (separate hard drive) as it does Windows via BootCamp?  I have some older applications at need Rosetta to work.

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hanssonrickard
Contributor
Contributor

I was only referring to the EXACT text that you wrote in your post.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

As much as you (and everyone else, so this stops popping up every so often) would like a lawyer's opinion on these forums, I doubt it'll ever happen - doing so might open up liability, and there's no benefit. So in leiu of that, please consider the following statements from someone who is not speaking in any official capacity but is vaguely familiar with the matter:

1. We have an obvious preference towards allowing as many guest OSes as possible to run in Fusion.

2. We work with Apple on both technical and general issues. This includes what they intend to be allowed to be virtualized, not just what's in the SLA.

3. We do not want to needlessly antagonize Apple (or any partner).

If you want to armchair lawyer it up, I personally don't care, but don't do it here and don't ask us to help you out. Take it up with Apple, and please don't make me lock this thread.

Don't get me wrong - I would love all OS X client SLAs to be relaxed, and I think it's great Apple has finally seen the light with Lion, but I'm not holding my breath for retroactive changes.

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greg409
Contributor
Contributor

"1. We have an obvious preference towards allowing as many guest OSes as possible to run in Fusion.

2. We work with Apple on both technical and general issues. This includes what they intend to be allowed to be virtualized, not just what's in the SLA.

3. We do not want to needlessly antagonize Apple (or any partner)."

I appreciate those answers. I suspect #2 and #3 probably explain the issue. If for some reason Apple has requested that you not let Snow Leopard and previous OS X system be virtualized, then I fully understand why you would comply and not want to incur their wrath.

So thank you for those comments/answers and I won't join any further discussion of this issue in this forum.

"If you want to armchair lawyer it up, I personally don't care, but don't do it here and don't ask us to help you out. Take it up with Apple, and please don't make me lock this thread."

Wow! It's this hostility and disrespect that I don't understand and don't appreciate. I didn't even open this thread. I responded to the assertion early in this thread that it would be ILLEGAL under the Apple SLA to do this. I don't believe that's true, and that doesn't appear to be VMWare's reasoning either.

I've paid for Fusion, and all my versions of OS X, and I only run OS X on Apple hardware. As a VMWare customer I think it was legitimate to join in this discussion, and I can't respond to someone's legal opinion without actually quoting the SLA. The person claiming something is illegal is the one playing armchair lawyer, not me. But sorry I stirred the pot.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

"If you want to armchair lawyer it up, I personally don't care, but don't do it here and don't ask us to help you out. Take it up with Apple, and please don't make me lock this thread."

Wow! It's this hostility and disrespect that I don't understand and don't appreciate. I didn't even open this thread.

Sorry, I didn't mean you specifically, I mean the general "you". This issue has come up many times before and I was trying to be as clear and blunt as possible to head off pointless dragging out of the thread.

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Bargonaut
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It may clear up the confusion for some consumers who are not aware

of the distinction Apple makes when they say "running on Apple hardware."

Using VMWare adds an abstraction layer between the Apple hardware

and the guest operating system.  Because the VM is "the computer" from

the perspective of the client OS, Apple's license prohibits the older client

versions of OS X from being virtualized.

It may seem like the guest OS would be the only copy running on the Mac,

but Apple really means it must be the OS "running the Mac."

-B

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hello,

greg409 wrote:

"If you want to armchair lawyer it up, I personally don't care, but don't do it here and don't ask us to help you out. Take it up with Apple, and please don't make me lock this thread."

Wow! It's this hostility and disrespect that I don't understand and don't appreciate. I didn't even open this thread. I responded to the assertion early in this thread that it would be ILLEGAL under the Apple SLA to do this. I don't believe that's true, and that doesn't appear to be VMWare's reasoning either.

.... The person claiming something is illegal is the one playing armchair lawyer, not me. But sorry I stirred the pot.

Please relax a bit and don't read too much into things like "deal with it". I don't think anyone here intentionally wanted to insult you or your feelings.

Some of the replies you got could have been written with a little more tact, but well.. you got unlucky I suppose and can thank some of the people before you who made the people here react a bit without much tact.

Don't take it personal is the best advise I can give you.

In regards to your remark:

"A. Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this  License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for  the Apple Software, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to  install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single  Apple-branded computer at a time."

The problem here is that the hardware your guest OS sees is not apple branded hardware, instead it is a virtualized chipset presented to the guest OS.

As a result that by itself means it is not running on "apple branded" hardware.

As others mentioned in different terminology (arm chair lawyer? shrug), you'll have to wait on the outcome of the official channels on whether this will be allowed in the future or not. If it will be allowed in the near future then you can bet it will be a announced widely and publicly marketed as one of the main new features.

Right now, it is safe to say that running an OS X client OS is not (yet?) allowed.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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greg409
Contributor
Contributor

Apple really means it must be the OS "running the Mac.

The problem here is that the hardware your guest OS sees is not apple branded hardware, instead it is a virtualized chipset presented to the guest OS.

As a result that by itself means it is not running on "apple branded" hardware.

I said above I wouldn't prolong this discussion, so I won't try to parse or debate the words in Apple's SLA vs these opinions. I'm not a lawyer and don't have any experience with licensing.  I'm simply an engineer that has spent many hours working with/for lawyers on patent suits (totally unrelated to software licensing). So although your interpetation may be correct, I will simply say that I would rather be working for the other side of anyone taking the position that Fusion is a non-Apple-branded computer, or that running OS X in a Fusion VM constitutes not running it on an Apple-branded computer. Anyway, I'm sure there must be some precedent that would apply to Apples' SLA to resolve it. So let's respect the forums wishes and not try to parse or debate the SLA further. I'm fully satisfied if VMWare is simply respecting Apples wishes to not support allowing it at this time.

BTW, the only reason I care if Snow Leopard (or Leopard) could be run as a VM under Lion is because my perfectly good HP Laserjet Copier/Scanner/Fax machine can no longer be used for scanning (or fax) from Lion. The HP proprietary scanning (and fax) software was PPC code (believe me when I tell you I have already wasted several days looking for alternative Lion software solutions).  HP has told me they will no longer support scanning (or fax) on this device from Lion so I have to spend about $500 to replace it with an equivalent product when the current product otherwise works great. (Incidently, I also tried running the HP device from a Windows XP VM in Fusion, and for some reason the most up-to-date HP Win XP drivers did not work there either, so that was not a solution.) I've already spent nearly $1000 upgrading other PPC software so I had hoped to not replace this otherwise perfectly good HP device.

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

First of all when I said "Deal with it! Smiley Wink" note the wink-smiley-face, I did not mean it to be taken in a negative manner.  Although it was partly said out of frustration that some users, in several different threads just were not getting the picture so to speak.  Nor were they accepting of the facts, regardless of how anyone wants to interpret the SLA, that there are only certain choices that can be made when installing an OS via the New Virtual Machine Assistant in VMware Fusion.

That said, I also meant something else when I said "Deal with it! Smiley Wink" and that is one can do what is possible and get on with other things.

Not that I advocate this, and don't ask me to give directions because I won't, I did it purely as proof of concept and without having to hack files or use third party supplied hacked files.  The picture should be self-explanatory. Smiley Wink

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greg409
Contributor
Contributor

Yeah Woody I was aware that could be done. Did you know there are even people running OS X on ..... Oh never mind. Smiley Happy

But I'm not interested in doing anything that isn't officially supported by VMWare (or other). Hopefully, with Apple's new position on Lion VMs on Macs, they will also relax any objection they have to Snow Leopard VMs on Macs just to fix these kinds of PPC issues for their loyal customers (yeah I live in an ideal world sometimes). And then VMWare will support it in their next version.

But more likely I'll be looking for a new All-in-One Laser Printer/Scanner/Fax machine that isn't made by HP in a month or so. HP had years to update the sotware for my HP machine to a Universal Binary before they discontinued that model and they never did it, so they lost me as a customer and I've had HP printers/etc. for many, many years.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hello,

Yes I'm sorry. I noticed after I posted my reply that the thread was a few days old and that I should have left it alone as you clearly dealt with it already.

greg409 wrote:

BTW, the only reason I care if Snow Leopard (or Leopard) could be run as a VM under Lion is because my perfectly good HP Laserjet Copier/Scanner/Fax machine can no longer be used for scanning (or fax) from Lion. The HP proprietary scanning (and fax) software was PPC code (believe me when I tell you I have already wasted several days looking for alternative Lion software solutions).  HP has told me they will no longer support scanning (or fax) on this device from Lion so I have to spend about $500 to replace it with an equivalent product when the current product otherwise works great. (Incidently, I also tried running the HP device from a Windows XP VM in Fusion, and for some reason the most up-to-date HP Win XP drivers did not work there either, so that was not a solution.) I've already spent nearly $1000 upgrading other PPC software so I had hoped to not replace this otherwise perfectly good HP device.

Ok, actually the windows XP VM for connecting to the HP device should work.

However having had several battles with getting their drivers installed on real windows hardware I am aware that it sometimes takes hours (not kidding) of rebooting and reinstalling the exact same software over and over until it sticks in the exact manner that HP has in mind this includes rebooting with the printer connected, inserting the usb cable at the right moment, the wrong moment and no usb cable connected at all.. etcetera..

The HP hardware is good, their driver software is umm...  not that great. But in the end (2 hours later) it should work and from that moment on you would be able to use the windows VM as a printer share.

Oh and if you don't want to go through that, then you could try to use a linux vm for that... but that's another animal. It should detect the printer without any additional loading of external driver software though.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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tjolley
Contributor
Contributor

"you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to  install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single  Apple-branded computer at a time."

EULA on the Leopard clients state you are only granted a license to run it on Apple-branded hardware. NOT as a VM. They let you run the Server version in a VM because you are paying $500 for the Leopard and Snow Leopard Server OS liscenses, while the Client version only runs $29.The only real difference between the two are a few under-the-hood changes.

With Lion, they changed the EULA to allow you to run up to two instances as a VM on an Apple-branded computer. They had to do this because, now OS X Lion Server is nothing more than a download add-on to the client. The side affect is that for the vast majority of people they will now be allowed to run OSX Lion as a VM. The bad part is that they will only work on Apple-branded computers. VMWare will have to program in checks to ensure that the VM won't run on non-Apple hardware.

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cbum
Contributor
Contributor

I realize the ball is entirely in Apple's court, but what is different this time around is that there is a large contingent of users that will be bitten by the lack of Rosetta support in Lion.

Apple currently has NO solution to this. Fusion and Parallels are a PERFECT solution to this problem, with only legal/permission hurdles, no technical hurdles to overcome.

I would hope that both VMWare and Parallels are politely knocking at Apple's door showing them how easy solving this could be.

PS: And yes, I am talking to Apple about this, as I would hope everyone reading this thread is.

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tjolley
Contributor
Contributor

It's not Apple's responsibility to continue to provide solutions for hardware that hasn't shipped in going on 7 years now. That falls squarely on the software vendors shoulders.

Seriously, if you are still looking at Apple to supply solutions for a 3rd party vendor who refuses to update their software, it is time to look for a replacement to that software and vendor.

I would like to see Leopard VM's, but when they only charge $29 for the OS with no software key required, and none of the same crap MS makes you go through to prove you are not a thief, I can forgive them not allowing VM's of the Client.

Your solution is actually quite simple if you require Leopard/SL. Go purchase a copy of Snow Leopard Server for $499 and don't install the server tools at the end of the installation. SL Server installs and runs quite nicely in a VM.

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tjolley
Contributor
Contributor

Another option is to not upgrade your machine to Lion after performing the download. Instead, create an install CD or USB key and wait until VMWare is updated to allow the creation of Lion VM's adn then run Lion in a VM

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cbum
Contributor
Contributor

Of course it's not Apple's "responsibility".

I don't even disagree with d/c'ing Rosetta.

But given how easy the solution, it seems to me it would make sense for them to do this.

They are selling Lion server for $30 or $40 ....   do the same for SL and problem solved.

Spending $500 to be allowed to keep running some old, obsolete, but unfortunatly irreplaceable SW - not so much.

And trust me, if there were alternative vendors, I would be patronizing them since along time!

And as to running Lion in a VM...  that could work, but is not satisfactory if there are improvements in Lion beyond just the workflow or UI.

I just assume OsX is getting better under the hood over time, and it would suck to forgo that.

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tjolley
Contributor
Contributor

Short of hacking, those are your only solutions. Progress won't stop to wait for lousy software vendors.

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

Another option is to not upgrade your machine to Lion after performing the download. Instead, create an install CD or USB key and wait until VMWare is updated to allow the creation of Lion VM's adn then run Lion in a VM

To add to that, until VMware does have it officially enabled one and always install both version on the physical hard drive and use then both natively.  Same concept as OS X and Windows under Boot Camp. Smiley Wink

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