Virtual PC Alternative for Tiger

[witness]

I know that this question has been asked before, but now that Tiger has been released and MS Virtual PC 7 no longer works the question has a different context.

I need an alternative to Virtual PC to tide me over until Microsoft get around to fixing the networking issues.

There seem to be quite a few alternatives available mainly based on either Qemu or Bochs. Does anyone have any experience of these running on 10.4 and can you make any recommendations?

Also I would be nice to be able to run PostgreSQL 8 on the virtual machine, postgres does not work on Virtual PC, does anyone have any experience of running it on any of the alternatives?

 

[MisterMe]

I know that this question has been asked before, but now that Tiger has been released and MS Virtual PC 7 no longer works the question has a different context.

I need an alternative to Virtual PC to tide me over until Microsoft get around to fixing the networking issues.

There seem to be quite a few alternatives available mainly based on either Qemu or Bochs. Does anyone have any experience of these running on 10.4 and can you make any recommendations?

Also I would be nice to be able to run PostgreSQL 8 on the virtual machine, postgres does not work on Virtual PC, does anyone have any experience of running it on any of the alternatives?

VPC 7 works just fine on MacOS X 10.4, save one feature. That feature is the Virtual Switch, which allows VPC to share your Mac's IP-address. If your virtual Windows machine can get its own IP-address manually, via DHCP, or some other protocol, the lack of Virtual Switch is of little consequence. Far and away, VPC has the best performance of the available Intel emulators. Also, VPC setup is as easy as installing it. The last time I setup Bochs, I had to manually configure the sectors and cylinders of disk image files. No fun. The takeaway message is that there is no reason to switch from VPC to another emulator.

 

[daveL]

VPC 7 works just fine on MacOS X 10.4, save one feature. That feature is the Virtual Switch, which allows VPC to share your Mac's IP-address. If your virtual Windows machine can get its own IP-address manually, via DHCP, or some other protocol, the lack of Virtual Switch is of little consequence. Far and away, VPC has the best performance of the available Intel emulators. Also, VPC setup is as easy as installing it. The last time I setup Bochs, I had to manually configure the sectors and cylinders of disk image files. No fun. The takeaway message is that there is no reason to switch from VPC to another emulator.

The Virtual Switch feature does *not* share the OS X IP address, that's the behavior of the default "shared network" behavior of VPC. The Virtual Switch option assign a unique address to VPC, distinct from the OS X IP address.

VPC 7 works fine on Tiger, with the exception of "virtual switch", which most users wouldn't need.

 

[witness]

Well as I said in my original post, it's networking that I need. Without the virtual switch I cannot connect to the virtual machine from other computers. I'm currently in the middle of developing/testing some windows based server software so without full networking VPC is pretty much useless.

Also as far as I understand, postgresql has never worked on VPC 6 or 7. If there were an alternative to VPC that had full networking and the ability to run postgresql on Tiger then I would be very interested to know, but i don't want to spend money on another x86 emulator on the chance that it "might" work.

 

[Don Martinello]

Well as I said in my original post, it's networking that I need. Without the virtual switch I cannot connect to the virtual machine from other computers. I'm currently in the middle of developing/testing some windows based server software so without full networking VPC is pretty much useless.

Also as far as I understand, postgresql has never worked on VPC 6 or 7. If there were an alternative to VPC that had full networking and the ability to run postgresql on Tiger then I would be very interested to know, but i don't want to spend money on another x86 emulator on the chance that it "might" work.

I'm having same problem with "Virtual Switch" bug. Until M$ releases patch for this bug I'm gonna switch to Qemu /QemuX/. I need networking so bad .

 

[witness]

I'm having same problem with "Virtual Switch" bug. Until M$ releases patch for this bug I'm gonna switch to Qemu /QemuX/. I need networking so bad .

I tried to install Qemu using Fink, but I kept getting build errors, so eventually gave up.

If you find a prebuilt package, please let me know.

 

[MisterMe]

I tried to install Qemu using Fink, but I kept getting build errors, so eventually gave up.

If you find a prebuilt package, please let me know.

There is this thing called the Internet.

 

[witness]

There is this thing called the Internet.

I don't know if you're comment is supposted to be funny or not, but I've already tried QemuX and that doesn't work either (it still tries to compile the source on your machine, rather than distributing a binary).

 

[MisterMe]

I don't know if you're comment is supposted to be funny or not, but I've already tried QemuX and that doesn't work either (it still tries to compile the source on your machine, rather than distributing a binary).

Perhaps you need to install the Developer Tools.

 

[witness]

Perhaps you need to install the Developer Tools.

I have the developer tools installed. Other things, such as PostgrSQL 8, compile and run with no issues.

Maybe it's just a Tiger thing. I have thought about going back to Panther, but so far the virtual machine is the only thing that I can't get working.

 

[BornAgainMac]

How about just clicking the Ad below this thread that takes you to an alternative to Virtual PC? It is called "Guest PC".

 

[witness]

How about just clicking the Ad below this thread that takes you to an alternative to Virtual PC? It is called "Guest PC".

I've read quite a bit about Guest PC and the feedback is not very positive. If they had a free trial I would try it out and buy it if it works, but paying for a product that might not work is too risky.

I think that I have decided that I will have to stick to RDP until VPC is fixed.