I started testing out Parallels desktop on my MacBook Pro yesterday. The original plan was to use it to boot from my Boot Camp partition, so that I would be able to do Windows development without having to let go of all the other things I do in MacOS. That didn’t go to well. I’ll give more details later, but for now suffice it to say I wouldn’t try it on any set up I didn’t want to wipe and start from scratch.
But then it occurred to me that I’ve been meaning to set up a CentOs 4.4 machine inside the house, just so that I emulated the set up of our production server - testing things before sending them live and all that - and that Parallels might be perfect for just that purpose. With that in mind, I proceeded to download an ISO image and go through the very straightforward process of setting it up.
CentOs is not one of the options listed in Parallel’s set up, but either Linux 2.6 Kernel or Red Hat Linux will do, since CentOs is rebranded Red Hat after all. I set it up for 512MBs of RAM with a growing 12 gig partition, since I will only use the text environment but disk space might be a concern. Installation went smoothly, but after rebooting the virtual machine got stuck on just right after uncompressing the Linux kernel.
After a bit of fiddling, I found out that the problem was the kernel image being used. When booting into CentOs you’ll get the Grub menu - press Enter so that you can get a list of the possible kernels. The two likely options are:
- CentOs-4 i386 (2.6.9-42.ELsmp)
- CentOs-4 i386-up (2.6.9-42.EL)
Select the second option, and it’ll boot well. Seems like the virtualization environment has problems with the SMP kernel. If you wish to make the change permanent, just edit your /etc/grub.conf file and change the default option from 0 to 1.
So far Parallels seems to be running everything smoothly, and has just saved me the grief of setting up a junk box and keeping it running. At $79, Parallels is beginning to look like a very convenient bargain. Now I only wish I’d gotten this puppy with 3 gigs of RAM.
I just wanted to say thank you so much for posting this on the interweb. I just ordered a VPS and wanted to load centos on parallels. As you described I received the same error, and like a charm your fix worked. Thanks again.
My pleasure, I’m glad I could be of assistance. Here’s another suggestion: if you haven’t yet registered Parallels, give VMWare Fusion a shot. I’ve been unable to contact Parallels for support on some issues, even as a registered user, through neither their e-mails nor the forums.
You can read more about VMWare Fusion here: http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/
The application mostly works, but it has some things that seriously need fixing, and Parallels lack of regard for their clients’ concerns are a definite problem.
Here’s a bit more about the Parallels support problems: http://forum.parallels.com/thread9820.html
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