Correct installation of parallel tools

Help
1

I am trying to install the latest version of parallel tools on my nixos machine.

When I search prl-tools in the nixos package search there are a bunch of prl-tools that have different names but look to point towards the same source.

image
image1267×1266 251 KB

My first question is how do I know what is the correct parallel tools to install - I am just looking for the normal one supplied by parallels.

Secondly - prl-tools appears to have a different install mechanism to environment.systemPackages (where I can control the source pkg channel). It installs like this:

#hardware-configuration.nix

hardware.parallels.enable = true

My second question is how can I control the channel that this is being installed from - I want package to come from the unstable channel.

Lastly I will note I am actually doing a fresh install using the manual method via packer so you can see my nix files here.

https://github.com/jamesla/nixos-bootstrapper

and my installer here:

https://github.com/jamesla/nixos-bootstrapper/blob/a8b6f7bab29d4494c30edbaf1e1a2ea514e5dcab/nixos.pkr.hcl#L37 (just incase I have to add another channel).

2

As this seems to be a kernel module, you need to use exactly the version of your kernel.

Thats why you should use config.boot.kernelPackages.prl-tools for hardware.parallels.package (which is already the default).

There is rarely, if ever a reason to change that.

If you want to use parallels from unstable, you need to use a kernel from unstable.

3

So I am having a few problems with that version of parallel tools and my first port of call was to try and upgrade the version to the latest which was 18.2 (currently on 18.1)

In other distributions the version of parallel tools isn’t tied to the kernel you are running so I’m a bit confused as to why the package would have been written this way.

The problems I’m running into are occassionally with copy and paste it appears to be locking up the virtual machine (with certain things in the clipboard).

And secondly the parallel fs kernel module doesn’t appear to be being loaded as I get the following error when I try and mount a volume via vagrant.

 Vagrant was unable to mount Parallels Desktop shared folders. This is usually (VagrantPlugins::Parallels::Errors::ParallelsMountFailed)
because the filesystem "prl_fs" is not available. This filesystem is
made available via the Parallels Tools and kernel module.
Please verify that these guest tools are properly installed in the
guest. This is not a bug in Vagrant and is usually caused by a faulty
Vagrant box. For context, the command attempted was:

How could I modify my config to use an unstable kernel so I can see if an update to parallel tools will resolve my issues?

4

ok i’ve updated kernel and therefor parallel tools and still having issues with prl_fs so i’ll raise a github issue. Cheers @NobbZ

5

Did you get a resolution for this, @jamesla, or open a ticket? I’m running NixOS in parallels and having constant freezes, etc. So many things I do cause me to get a rainbow wheel and freeze parallels entirely.