Help Center in VMWare Fusion

[jsulak]

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

[lfraley]

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?

[jsulak]

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

[lfraley]

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-----
>
>

[jsulak]

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

[GarethOakes]

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

[naglists]

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.