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jsulak1-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 27, 2011
Question

Help Center in VMWare Fusion

  • May 27, 2011
  • 6 replies
  • 1339 views
Hey everybody,

I realize this isn't a supported configuration, but I'm attempting to use Arbortext 5.3/5.4 on Windows 7 in VMWare Fusion. Arbortext itself works fine (so far). The problem I'm running into is that when I launch Help Center, instead of getting the normal "Help Center Overview" page, I get a nice text page with null pointer exception output.
Has anyone out there running Arbortext in this environment (or any virtualized environment) run into this problem?

Thanks,

James

    6 replies

    L
    lfraley1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    May 27, 2011
    I have several images that I'm running this way and haven't gotten that
    error message.

    I know this sounds dumb but do the Help Center files exist in the image if
    you go looking for them in the install tree?


    J
    jsulak1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    May 27, 2011
    Hi Liz,

    I thought you might be running using that setup... I'll check that. I've tried it in two VMs:

    - I migrated an existing physical machine with a working copy of Arbortext 5.3 / Help Center to a VM.
    - The second VM is a fresh install of Windows, and Arbortext is essentially the first application I installed.

    Both give the same problem.

    Thanks,

    James

    L
    lfraley1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    May 27, 2011
    On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:28 AM, James Sulak <jsulak@jonesmcclure.com>wrote:

    > Hi Liz,
    >
    > I thought you might be running using that setup... I'll check that. I've
    > tried it in two VMs:
    >
    > - I migrated an existing physical machine with a working copy of Arbortext
    > 5.3 / Help Center to a VM.
    >

    If it's missing in this image, it sounds like the migration didn't fully
    complete or something happened during the migration. Is there other stuff
    missing in this image that is on the physical machine?


    > - The second VM is a fresh install of Windows, and Arbortext is essentially
    > the first application I installed.
    >

    weird - is the help center unchecked by default in a fresh install?


    >
    > Both give the same problem.
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > James
    >
    >
    > From: Liz Fraley [
    > nice text page with null pointer exception output.
    > Has anyone out there running Arbortext in this environment (or any
    > virtualized environment) run into this problem?
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > James
    >
    > -----End Original Message-----
    >
    > -----End Original Message-----
    >
    >
    J
    jsulak1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    May 27, 2011
    I figured it out. The issue was a feature in VMWare Fusion called "Mirrored Folders," which automatically maps the Documents, Desktop, etc. folders in your guest operating system to the same on your host. This is done through a network share, so those folders end up having restricted permissions from the guest. Help Center was trying to write temporary files there but didn't have the right permissions. Disabling this did the trick.
    Very frustrating.
    -James


    G
    GarethOakes16-Pearl
    16-Pearl
    May 27, 2011
    FWIW we use Arbortext in VMs and never had this issue (VMware and Windows
    Virtual PC). No clever ideas at this stage, sorry, besides reinstalling
    Arbortext.



    -G


    N
    naglists1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    May 27, 2011
    Thanks for sharing! We are exploring some temporary virtualizations ... this
    and similar will be good to watch out for.

    I have run into the Mirrored Folders before, but not relative to Help
    Center. I was experiencing some very strange performance issues in the VM
    before I figured out that my "Desktop" was, as you say, being stored on my
    home drive which was very, very network-far away. Copying an installation
    package in preparation for an install resulted in quite the network
    triple-round-trip.

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