Mac Numbers affecting Multiple VMs

[neilford]

I have set up two VMs. One with an external hard drive and one without. They are made from the same machine. When I

created the second, VMware assigned a new mac number to the new vm. They are supposed to be the same machine,

with the only difference being the second virtual drive. The problem is the new MAC address messes up my software

regs because a lot of software uses the mac address to make the key. Is there a way around this? My original thinking

was to have a second volume that I could add or remove that was accessible to both the Mac and the PC. The software

either wants it there or not, thus the need for two VMs.

Thanks.

neilford

[admin]

When you create the copy of the VM and run it for the first time, you should have been asked if you moved it or if you copied it. Selecting "copied it" (the default) creates a new MAC address, so if you need the same MAC address, you should select "moved it". Of course, you shouldn't try running these at the same time if they could possibly talk to each other (MAC addresses need to be unique).

[rcardona2k]

To add more detail to what Eric said, if you go back to the original VM with the correct Ethernet MAC address and copy all of the lines beginning with "uuid" and "ethernet" and replace these lines in the copy, this re-establishes the identity of the first VM. Like Eric says, you can't run these machines at the same time on the same network without causing a conflict.

[neilford]

I tried making a copy of the machine with the mac address I wanted. I then added the disk from the virtual hard disk from the other VM.

When I try to run it, I selected " I moved it". When I try to boot, I get an error of " No Bootable Machine". Is there a reason why this wouldn't work?

Thanks.

neilford

[neilford]

I think I know what this error was. I copied the VM without the disk.

neilford

[rcardona2k]

The filename in the configuration file must be in the same directory as the .vmx configuration file, e.g.

ide0.0.fileName = "MyDisk.vmdk"

MyDisk.vmdk needs to be in the same place as the .vmx file. If you want to use a disk in a different location or rename the .vmdk you need to change the configuration file to reflect that, e.g.

ide0.0.fileName = "NewDisk.vmdk" or use a full path like:

ide0.0:fileName="/Users/Shared/SharedDisk.vmdk"

Using full paths can be tricky especially if you're using an external USB disk for storing any of these VMs. You should confirm full paths using Terminal so you pickup hidden extensions like a VM bundle's ".vmwarevm" extension which is not normally viewable in the Finder.