Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac - interesting

[donmontalvo]

Well, in the past we used to use Parallels' deployment package to wrap their installer, and/or any VMs to deploy:

Parallels Desktop Mass Deployment

Interesting how Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac appears to have the application at the top level of their downloadable DMG, although it is hidden so you may not notice.

$ ls -l /Volumes/Parallels Desktop 11/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 montd124  1514140199  102 Aug 15 20:22 Install.app
drwxr-xr-x@ 4 montd124  1514140199  136 Aug 15 20:22 Parallels Desktop.app
$

Copying the to /Applications works fine on a test Mac, although I haven't tried suppressing stuff.

$ sudo cp -R /Volumes/Parallels Desktop 11/Parallels Desktop.app /Applications/Parallels Desktop.app
bash-3.2# ls -l /Applications/ | grep Parallels
drwxr-xr-x@  4 root      admin           136 Aug 25 22:04 Parallels Desktop.app
$

Working with Parallels Priority support to get all suppression stuff documented, some of the steps are not in their prlctl/prlsrvctl man pages, will share once sorted out.

On a side note, I wonder if this app has been sandboxed? Uninstall is surprisingly straight forward (drag app to trash).

How to uninstall Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac

Anyone hit this yet?

Don

[andrew_nicholas]

Thanks for noting this! I've been trying to come up with a good workaround while they address the Mass Deployment package. Would you just repackage the Parallels 11 binaries and install them separately, then use a post install script to do all the activation?

[Kaltsas]

Slightly related question, does v11 regular edition (not the pro edition) retain linked clones?

[donmontalvo]

We haven't had luck getting El Capitan to install within Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac.

Looks like folks on the Parallels forum are having the same problem(s).

El Capitan on Parallels 11

@andrew.nicholas We're hoping to provide never-booted El Capitan virtual machines. Users will have admin rights and will need to install the tools on the virtual machines. Once Apple/JAMF start supporting El Capitan, we'll be able to leverage existing processes to get these things up and running.

@Kaltsas I'd start a thread there, since their engineers are monitoring El Capitan / Parallels 11 threads.

[andrew_nicholas]

@donmontalvo Thanks for the info! How have you packaged 11 for distribution? I've not been able to make the Mass Deployment Tool work and correctly apply any of the settings in the deploy.cfg file.

[donmontalvo]

@andrew.nicholas we spent some time on calls with Parallels engineers, so we can script prlctl/prlsrvctl commands, instead of using a wrapper (Gatekeeper, etc.), we will be revisiting soon.

[andrew_nicholas]

@donmontalvo Looks like Parallels released v1.2.7 of the Deployment Tool.

[ccoy]

It appears this is still an issue. I just recently attempted to upgrade my users to v11 using the autodeploy.pkg and the install fails with some generic looking errors. Oddly enough, it still appears to have installed, but requires the user (in this case myself) to acknowledge a prompt to activate the license.

[donmontalvo]

@andrew.nicholas Sorry for the late response, 1.2.7 version of the Deployment Tool works like a charm.

On a side note, anyone know how to kill this prompt?

Parallels' dev team appear to have never come up with a solution.

TIA,
Don

[karthikeyan_mac]

Hi @donmontalvo ,

Try the below to suppress. (Not Tested since we use VMware)

#!/bin/sh
sudo sqlite3 /Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db “INSERT or REPLACE INTO access values (‘kTCCServiceAccessibility’, ‘com.parallels.desktop.console’, 1,0,1,NULL,NULL);

Thanks & Regards,
Karthikeyan

[Aziz]

@donmontalvo

I use Privacy Manager (by the University of Utah Marriott). It's simple as deploying the package and sending a command.

Example:

sudo /usr/local/bin/privacy_services_manager.py add accessibility Read&Write Gold

Now there's a check mark for Read & Write Gold in the accessibility pane.

Download Link:

https://github.com/univ-of-utah-marriott-library-apple/privacy_services_manager

@karthikeyan.mac I rarely get those commands to work for me :/

[donmontalvo]

Hi @karthikeyan.mac and @Abdiaziz, we followed up with Parallels on how to get their product from not automatically adding itself to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility. We don't want to tweak OS X behavior, just want them to stop putting it there unless we want it to go there.

[jacob_salmela · Accepted solution]

You can remove it from the accessibility list after installation like this using tccutil.py:

brew install tccutil
sudo tccutil --remove com.parallels.desktop.console

I realize this post is a bit old, but I ran into it recently when I was tasked with deploying Parallels.

Thanks.

[donmontalvo]

@jacob_salmela awesome, I'll pass that info along to the Parallels engineers. :)

Hoping Parallels can offer a prompt, to let user/s decide whether to add it or not.

Thanks,
Don

[andrew_nicholas]

Just an FYI incase anyone is lagging like me. I'm getting around to working with 11.1.2-32408 and it appears that the packager does not correctly work with the deploy cfg and this version again.

[bpavlov]

@andrew.nicholas I just created a package for 11.1.2 without problems. I did run into an issue with the deploy.cfg file and using one of the options.

Here's what I sent to Parallels Support:

After a bit of troubleshooting, the issue appears with one setting in the deploy.cfg. All other values I'm choosing work fine except this one: start_pd_as_service="no" # start_pd_as_service="yes" The following combinations work just fine which I expected since that's the default value anyways: # start_pd_as_service="no" start_pd_as_service="yes" or # start_pd_as_service="no" # start_pd_as_service="yes" I suspect there may be an error in how it's handling the disabling of Parallels as a service. That should hopefully give more information for the engineer who looks into my request.

Parallels Support response:

As we discussed during our recent phone conversation feature "Start Parallels Desktop as a service" has been replaced in a newer version of Parallels Desktop 11. Therefore, please disable (comment) the following options in the deploy.cfg file: # start_pd_as_service="no" # start_pd_as_service="yes" You can find some additional information in regards to using "Headless" Parallels Desktop feature under the following article http://kb.parallels.com/en/123298 However, "Headless" feature can't be currently implemented in deploy package. This issue is under investigation and will be fixed in one of our future updates.

If this is not related to your problem, I would start with a fresh deploy.cfg and start enabling each option you want one by one until you find the problem. That's how I ran into this particular problem.

[rmishra]

Has anyone tried to create a package for parallels 11.1.3 dmg file without mass deployment procedure ? What is the the other alternative to package parallels 11 if you don't have license key?

[donmontalvo]

@rmishra we worked with the developer to come up with a wrapper-less process. Unfortunately some of the commands can't be triggered using a postinstall script or an after policy script. So we are stuck with using their deployment wrapper PKG. It would be nice to get away from that method of deployment, hoping Parallels dev team has this on their radar.

[rmishra]

@donmontalvo thanks for response. Finally worked with jam support team couple of weeks back and I used snapshot method in composer to capture the install without license and deployed dmg in JSS and it works