Installing Snow Leopard (and Rosetta) into Parallels on modern Intel Macs

New report on experience with Mountain Lion

I have become a Newbie to this forum specifically to say thanks to MichaelLAX for the clear and accurate instructions, but I see that he and other contributors like to hear a) what's the motive for using Rosetta, and b) reports on how it's all going.

a) I have a string of MacBook Pro's bought at intervals of 3-4 years since 2001. These get passed around the family or used for things like printer servers, music etc and there's a lot of interchanging of files so compatibility between machines in important to us. There's lots of odd bits of software in use such as Eudora 6.2, BBEdit, Graphic Converter, Sound Studio, PhotoStudio and Canon's Photostitch that need Rosetta, not to mention my Very Old Copy of Microsoft Office. Of course there are up to date versions or alternatives to these but they cost money and more importantly they take time to acquire and learn how to make them inter-operable. Rosetta support buys time whilst I check out the alternatives.

b) the trigger for moving to Mountain Lion was a display fault in what was then our most recent MacBook Pro, a 2008 Intel machine, then running OS X 10.5.8. So I bought a new MacBook Pro 15" (MBP- 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7) in mid July and migrated everything from the 2008 machine (which then went in for repair). The new machine came with Lion and a free upgrade to Mountain Lion (ML) which I installed after a few days (so I did not have much experience of plain Lion). It was only after starting up the new MBP that I became aware of the Rosetta support problem so MichaelLAX's posts were really good news to find.

Everything being brand new, I bought Parallels 7, found the boxed disc did not work with ML, then installed the free update to latest version (build 786787 dated 3 Aug which did work).

MichaelLAX's instructions were very clear, though I did hit the problem of not being able to use 'touch' for the ServerVersion.plist step. (Solved by using a 2005 Power PC Mac to make the disc image).

Things then worked very much as MichaelLAX said they would, except that in the Virtual Machine Configuration window, Hardware tab, I got asked how many processors I wanted. I left it at 1.

I have found there is a problem with stability. On the first occasion, virtual Snow Leopard (vSL) froze with noise on part of the screen (presumably a software addressing or memory protection fault). It was hard to get vSL to shut down until I discovered how to get the Parallels menu bar to show (move cursor right to top of screen, duh!) and turn off full screen mode. Then the "virtual power switch" became visible.

In addition, on two other occasions vSL refused to start up after a freeze and gave the message that Parallels does not support the non-server version of SL. It looks as if whatever marker it is that converts the disc image to look like the server version (presumably it's related to that 'touch' step with ServerVersion.plist) has got lost or deleted. To get things going again I need to delete the .pvm file and copy in the backup. MichaelLAX's advice to keep a copy is really very good advice and saves going through the whole time-consuming process over again.

One of the freeze-ups happened after a 'power low' warning showed on the vSL screen, and the others seemed to be related to sleep. So maybe there's an issue with "virtual power management"? a

It's a long post for a Newbie I know but I hope it has been useful to some readers to get news of how this process works under ML on a very new machine.

Many thanks for your comments on my post.

I had read through the whole thread before committing to Parallels 7 but without the operating experience I didn't take in the significance of what you said in Post #68. I'll re-read the thread now and maybe learn more.

Yes, I am always careful about licenses etc. I have not yet decided exactly how to update the configuration of my "stable" of Macs, and may well only run the newest machine on Mountain Lion as the older ones do not have Magic Trackpads. So I might only need Parallels 7 on one machine.

Thanks again for your very useful guide and advice.

Failing on step 1

I really like the idea of being able to run SL without re-booting. However, I'm having a problem.

The touch command fails to create the ServerVersion.plist file. It tell me that I have a Read-only file system. Here is the output from the terminal command.

Admins-Mac-Pro:~ Admin$ touch '/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist'
touch: /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist: Read-only file system
Admins-Mac-Pro:~ Admin$

Drilling down and examining the .../CoreServices sub-directory I can confirm the file was not created.

I'm using a boxed Snow Leopard DVD purchased from Apple identical to the image shown by MichaelLAX.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Failing on Step 1

Yes, I am using Mountain Lion. I will try it in Snow Leopard. I still have a copy that I can boot off. I skipped Lion and just started my migration to ML.

Thank you,

Failing on Step 1 (resolved)

I moved the Snow Leopard Install cdr image to a shared drive,restarted from my Snow Leopard HD and was able executed the touch command successfully. The ServerVersion.plist file was created and I'm now on step 3.

Thank you for this great guide and your help.

Snow Leopard updates

I just tried to apply updates (Guide Step 3.3). But rather than using Software Update, to save some download time, I tried to use the MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.8.dmg that I had available. Storage is cheap and I keep a lot of stuff. Anyway, the update installer issued this error message...

"Mac OS X Update Combined can't be installed on this disk. An error occurred while evaluating JavaScript for the package."

Any thoughts on why this fails?

I'm mostly curious but If updates are not available through Software updates it would be nice to be able to use the dmg in the update process. Meanwhile I'll proceed with Software Update.

Here is a link to the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 on the Apple website. I do not believe that the dmg I have is v1.1. If you prefer link to my copy I can provide that instead. I will need to upload it to a non public location but I am not sure of the legal implications of redistributing Apple files.

BTW, I did successfully complete the Snow Leopard pvm.

Yes, v1.1 is still a problem. Using the install using the combo gives the error on the "Select a Destination Window". There are error messages in the Console Install Log but I have no idea what they are telling me.

I got it to work!

I reinstalled Parallel Tools, and connected to the dmg using the CD icon at in the lower right part of the Parallels window. The install is running now and will complete in a few minutes. It is much faster using the dmg as opposed to Software update. It took only took about 10 minutes. (approx. 1/4 the time).

Again, thank you for your assistance, and this guide.

OK so I'm going to try this method again because I don't want the Server Snow Leopard but before i begin I need to know if my disc will work yes it is the one that came with my computer Mac OS X Install DVD 10.6.3 if that doesn't work let me know so I can find another one thanks.

Install Failed--help

So I had followed the instructions a few months back and everything was going swimmingly. Then I received the dreaded Server Leopard error. I thought, "no problem. I'll just open my backup." But my backup drive had failed. Therefore, I have no backup file to open. So, again, I thought, "No problem. I'll just create a new VM." Except now, every time I try to install, I get the following message:

Install Failed. Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer. The installer could not copy the necessary support files.

I'm on an i5 MBP, running 10.7.4. No problems during the initial setup. In fact, the first time around, everything worked on the first try. This message is consistent.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Keith

MichaelLAX said:

What a series of bad luck!

At what point in the installation instructions are you receiving these messages? What version of Parallels 7 are you using?

Also, are you saying that a hard drive that included your backup failed, or did the backup fail for some other reason.

I am currently online on iChat as MichaelLAX. Let's chat!

Click to expand...

I get stuck at Substep 13 of Part 2 (during the installation). The hard drive that included my backup failed. My original VM failed because I had not shut it down. I've definitely learned the hard way, on this one. Any help you can offer would be huge.

Is there a way to extract data from within the VM--i.e. to get access to the file that I want to open. I have a bootable Snow Leopard clone of my hard drive before I upgraded it to Lion. In a worst case, I could use that to access the software I need. But I would like to have the most up-to-date data file.

If you have time to ichat, I should be available late Saturday or early Sunday.

Thanks,

Keith

MichaelLAX said:

This weekend is a tough one for me, so let's see if we can fix this one sooner.

Firstly, as noted in Cautionary Note #1: ALWAYS save data OUTSIDE of the virtual environment. Use the Shared Folder or File Sharing (GO Menu to CONNECT TO SERVER... in the Finder) to mount the appropriate folder for data outside of the virtual environment.

Secondly, hopefully when you originally setup your Mac OS X Snow Leopard.pvm file, you caught the modification to Step 2; substep 7, that now provides: "At the Virtual Machine Configuration window, click Hardware, then Boot Order and check Select Boot Device on Startup, close the Hardware window (click the red button) and then click Continue."

The inclusion of this step results in the extra startup screen, posted below (click on image to enlarge).

If you have this screen, let me know...[remainder deleted in favor of next post to be posted...]

As far as attempting to recreate the .pvm file from scratch, what version of Parallels 7 are you running?

Click to expand...

Michael,

I'm on version 7.0.15098.770637. I don't believe I've updated it since I purchased it.

I did check on select boot device on startup. I do get the screen that you're referring to. And then an error window opens stating:
An invalid Mac OS version is installed.

Mac OS X virtual machines can have only the Mac OS X Server Leopard or Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard operating system installed. Other versions of Mac OS are not supported.

Thanks for all your help.

Keith

A thousand thank you's

Michael,

It worked beautifully. I've backed it up in three different places to make sure I don't get stuck like this, again.

I really can't thank you, enough. While I only would have lost a month of data, I couldn't even create a new VM. This has saved my life.

Keith