I have two user accounts on my MacBook Pro. I set up a VM using Fusion on my administrator's account but it doesn't appear in the VM Library when I run Fusion in my other account.
I am having the same problems and no luck fixing despite all the good infromation here. This is what I posted under the user guide:
Why is it that my virtual machine keeps locking out other users? I have the VM and all related files -- except the application itself -- in the users/shared folder and I set all permissions (manually) to read/write for all users. After one user uses the account then the rest of the users are locked out. In finder, I can see that the newest files do not have the same permissions. I am shutting down the Windows XP VM via windows and VMWare. Am I going to have to manually open all newly created files for multiple users to use this (VMWare 1.1). Documentation has not helped so far. Same thing happened after I created a "snapshot." I reverted and unlocked the new files for all users. What am I missing. The share files was created and checked under VMWare initially.
It sounds like I have done everything right to fix the problem, but no luck. Is there something about that install?
This information is my original thread on how to share machines, now that Fusion has a lot more options, it should be much easier to implement. Open your VM bundle in /Users/Shared and move the .vmdk file(s) to /Users/Shared proper.
Next, what you can do is create a virtual machine per user that all use the base .vmdk. Go through the New Machine Wizard for each user and when you get to Virtual Hard Disk, open "Advanced disk options" pick "Use an existing virtual machine disk" and choose your .vmdk in /User/Shared. Repeat for each user. Each user will be able to maintain their own snapshots and they will not take ownership or step over the permissions of the vmdk.
Important notes: Right now for your one machine in /User/Shared, it has a unique identier (UUID) that is tied to the virtual machine Ethernet address, doing the above may cause Windows or other software to require re-activation (since they are "technically" new machines). You can avoid this by moving the VM bundle without the vmdk to one account and open and edit the .vmx configuration to "point" to the VMDK left in /Users/Shared, the line to edit will look like this when you're done:
ide0:0.fileName = "/Users/Shared/WinXP.vmdk"
or
scsi:0.fileName = "/Users/Shared/WinXP.vmdk"
When this machine is working in one user's home directory, e.g. Documents > Virtual Machines > SharedVM. You need to copy the VM to each user's respective Documents > Virtual Machine folders and change ownership and permissions to each user. VMware will ask the first time you open the machine after moving it, if you "moved" or "copied" it, always choose "moved" or you defeat the whole purpose of copying the VM folder to share it among users.
Finally everything will work without any activation because you've "cloned" the machine across several users keeping just the virtual disk itself in /User/Shared.
I hope this makes sense.
In finder, I can see that the newest files do not have the same permissions
Which files do not have the same permissions? As I noted earlier in the thread and in , suspend and snapshot currently do this, and so you should avoid those operations.
Next, what you can do is create a virtual machine per user that all use the base .vmdk. Go through the New Machine Wizard for each user and when you get to Virtual Hard Disk, open "Advanced disk options" pick "Use an existing virtual machine disk" and choose your .vmdk in /User/Shared. Repeat for each user. Each user will be able to maintain their own snapshots and they will not take ownership or step over the permissions of the vmdk.
Wait - this will break horribly if any user ever discards or takes a new snapshot (though it does fix the suspend issue). If any user does this, it will corrupt the disk for all other users. I suppose you could remove write permissions on the base disk, but I'm not sure how Fusion will react.
Thanks. I undid snapshot (as mentioned). I then went through again and changed all the permissions. As it turns out -- not all of them were set right. Now they all have my two primary users and "everyone" with "read/write" permission. Nothing for admins or staff. There was a mix before. I also changed the folder name to clarify my "shared" folder (which I call the tunnel) from the general XP folder. The settings were weird for the shared folder for a bit, but seem to have resolved itself (I could not get it to click on for some reason). Seems to be working. I would like to take a snapshot, but I guess I could just make a back up copy by copying the files.
I have the same problem: I would like to access a virtual machine from different user accounts.
I can open VMware Fusion in my second account, no problem, but it then asks me to set up the guest operating system, which I already did in my first account. Installing another copy of Windows 7 for the second account doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.
Cut and paste? Install and uninstall?
My virtual machine appears to be here currently: /Users/MyName/Documents/Virtual Machines/Windows 7 x64wmwarevm. Do I just move it to /Users/Shared?
Even when the .vmwarevm file is in the Users\Shared\ folder and similar to other replies to this pos, I found that the multi-user permissions were not consistently propagated to all vmdk files after showing package contents. My .vmwarevm file had approximately 70 files and folders within the package. Rather than manually editing the permissions for all of these files i found the quickest way is to remove the user having permissions issues from the .vmwarevm file permissions list. Wait a little bit for the permissions to propagate through the package. Then re-add the user with Read & Write permissions to the .vmwarevm package file. Tested good for me.
