Unshare VM?

[gringley]

(This post was flagged for spamming and I am not sure how unintelligible I will have to make it to get by the spam filter.)

I keep all of my VMs on an external drive.  Recently the system was booted without the external drive, and it could no longer find the VMs.  I moved them all back into the UI.  Some of the VMs would only move to the SHARED VIRTUAL MACHINES folder, while others moved normally.  How do I remove the shared status on those VMs?  Or conversely how would I share the existing VMs that Fusion does not see as shared?

[wila]

Hi,

The status if a VM is shared or not depends on the ownership rights of the folder and files of the VM.

See also: Creating a Shared Virtual Machine in Fusion

IOW, in order to remove a VM as shared follow these steps:

- shut down the VM

- delete the VM from your library (be careful to not delete the data! --> select "Keep File")

- remove the capability of others to access your VM (in particular the ability to write)

- add the VM back to your library with the File -> Open menu

--

Wil

[gringley]

I guess my confusion here is the the VMs are all on an external drive that is set to ignore permissions.  Indeed Fusion was seeing the permissions, and those VM packages where all files were set to Read/Write for Everyone were the ones being seen as "Shared Virtual Machines" by the UI.  Other VMs where Everyone only had Read permissions were seen as normal VMs by the UI.  Despite the KB it seems the state of Everyone's permissions is what really determines if a VM is "Shared" or not.

[wila]

Hi,

Yes I think the "shared" nomenclature is a tad confusing.

Especially if you are familiar with shared VMs from the workstation product, where a shared VM means something completely different.

The explanation in the doc is also not clear that it is all about write permissions.

In my book being able to copy it, already means that it can be "shared".

--

Wil