Virtual Mac on Lacie

Theydon Bois

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I have a virtual Snow Leopard on my Lacie (partitioned with the Mac image and another partition full of images) which I boot into if I want to CCC a mac, but found today when I went to take an image of a new Lion MacBook Pro that it just came up with the error message that I have seen before if you try and boot a Mac when you don't have the right DVD.

Probably answering my own question, but do I need to ensure that my virtual Mac is ALWAYS a newer/the same OS than the Mac I want to boot off of and image?

If so, has anyone had a problem upgrading a virtual Mac to Lion?
 
Are you using Lion or Lion Server? You can only officially virtualise Server editions of OSX, so it could be it's checking the version you're trying to install against a list of OS' that you're allowed to install and blocking it.
 
I think there must be an official term for Virtual, as I just meant that I had cloned a Snow Leopard Macbook to a partition on my external Lacie drive. This has allowed me to boot up from this image, and clone to or from any Mac (iMac or Macbook) that I am working on.

My Macs here are predominantly Tiger (30) Leopard (25) and all the Macbooks are Snow Leopard (14) and I can happily boot my Lacie off a Tiger iMac and be working on the Snow Leopard image stored on the Lacie.

[-]However, booting (holding T) fails (I get the firewire and Thunderbolt symbols floating around the screen), and restarting the MBP via startup disk comes up with the grey screen that in the past has meant I was working from an older disk than the machine.[/-]
 
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However, booting (holding T) fails (I get the firewire and Thunderbolt symbols floating around the screen), and restarting the MBP via startup disk comes up with the grey screen that in the past has meant I was working from an older disk than the machine.

Please ignore this :blush:

I of course meant holding down option on boot shows my Lacie drive, but after selection, shows me the grey screen that I think basically means 'you cannot boot from this device as its older than the host' but just want clarification.
 
Finally got some more time to play about with this - updated the virtual MacBook I have running on a Lacie to 10.6.7, then ran the Lion installation DVD I created, and Lion installed and updated my Lacie Hard drive installation. :smashin:
 
Hi,
Hope to clear some confusion in terms here.
Virtualisation is where you have one or more OS's running on common hardware. So, VMWare fusion, Virtual Box, or Parallels into which you install Windows XP, 7, NT, and/or whatever Unix OS you want, the only limit is the limits of the physical hardware that can be shared by the virtual machines.

Bootcamp is not virtualisation, it;s running an OS different to OS X natively on Apple hardware.

What Theydon Bois has done is to clone his OS onto an external drive, which is not virtualisation, just running the OS from a different volume.
 
As another user posted, Apple are restrictive in their EULA in that the do not allow the desktop OS to be virtualised, nor do they allow OS X to be installed on anything other that Apple hardware, although it is possible.
 
As another user posted, Apple are restrictive in their EULA in that the do not allow the desktop OS to be virtualised, nor do they allow OS X to be installed on anything other that Apple hardware, although it is possible.

Actually that is not fully accurate...The Snow Leopard does not cover any concept of virtualisation. The closest interpretation of that concept would be in

2.A. Single Use License - It states that you can use and run one copy at a time on a Single Apple Branded computer. One could reasonably argue that running the software in a virtual machine is not a different computer, in fact there is every reasonable argument for it that it is then the same single apple branded computer. Naturally the single use license would not be valid since you only have one copy, therefore in order to be fully compliant one could use the family pack license which is one piece of software with five licenses which paragraph in the same Software License Agreement under 2.B. does not stipulate that they cannot be used on the same machine.


In addition, if one was to use OSX Lion, when you look in the Software License Agreement you'll see the following sections;

2,B,iii - License from App Store - Allowed two instances of virtual machines on each Mac you already own or control that is already running the software. So my interpretation, if this thread was about virtualisation which it actually turned out to be not, the OP would have been absolutely fine and within his rights to virtualise the OSX Desktop on his machine. Especially considering he is not suggesting to use it in a time, terminal nor service bureau type scenario, he is popularly stated using it for personal use.


Further more it is interesting and worth noting that the Software License Agreement of OS X Lion Server (yes I know the OP was talking Snow Leopard, this is just for information) leaves out the required of using Apple Branded Computers for use by a commercial enterprise and educational institution whilst those carefully chosen words are used elsewhere in the Software License Agreement. So no such restrictions, and of course it is the same OS with some extra bits integrated and a slightly different Software License Agreement and very good value for money nowadays.
 

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