Mac 10.6.3 guest on 10.6.8 host, can't set up printer

[SkiAddict1]

Greetings,

I am running VB 4.3.36 on my Mac 10.6.8 as a test, prior to ungrading to El Capitan. The guest is 10.6.3 since I read somewhere a few days ago that upgrading guests to 10.6.8 is a very bad idea. The VM settings are Mac OS X 32-bit (since I found the OS installer hung if I chose anything else) and all the others are exactly as the VM "wizard" suggested.

I have everything working in the guest just like I want it, and now comes the time to install printers. I've run the installer for my printer in the guest and it thinks it succeeded, but............no printer is showing in System Preferences -> Print & Fax!

I've tried printer sharing on the host side, and it makes no difference. I've googled, and I've searched here, to no avail. Clearly setting up printers for Mac guests is easy as pie, since everyone else seems to know how to do it! What am I missing?

Grateful TIA!

[socratis]

I read somewhere a few days ago that upgrading guests to 10.6.8 is a very bad idea.

Citation needed. I've never heard that one. And a reason or two on the why front would help...

The VM settings are Mac OS X 32-bit (since I found the OS installer hung if I chose anything else)

You should be using the specific "10.6 Snow Leopard (64-bit)" template. I haven't seen this one failing. If it does, I'd like to know about it.

What am I missing?

I don't know about what you're missing, but we are definitely light on the details. "I have a printer" isn't quite detailed.

1. I'd like to see the "recipe" of the VM. Right-click on the VM, select "Show in Finder". The file that comes up is your .vbox (the settings of the VM). ZIP it and attach it to your response.
2. How is your printer attached? USB? Network? Brand and model please.
3. What are your network settings that you've tried? I'll see your current one (if you attach the .vbox), but I'd like to know what you've tried and it failed.

[SkiAddict1]

I read somewhere a few days ago that upgrading guests to 10.6.8 is a very bad idea.

Citation needed. I've never heard that one. And a reason or two on the why front would help...

Goodness, I didn't realise I was writing a Wikipedia page, sorry

I have googled literally dozens, if not hundreds, of pages on virtual machine issues in the past 7 days. I believe the one that put me off upgrading to 10.6.8 was at forums dot virtualbox dot org slash viewtopic dot php question f equals 8&t equals 64346 -- yes, the issue was marked as solved, but I gained the impression that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" with respect to my own installation. 10.6.3 was running fine with everything I needed to do on it, so there seemed no point potentially wasting my time trying to get to the latest and greatest 10.6.

The VM settings are Mac OS X 32-bit (since I found the OS installer hung if I chose anything else)

You should be using the specific "10.6 Snow Leopard (64-bit)" template. I haven't seen this one failing. If it does, I'd like to know about it.

Two days ago I spent literally the entire day creating drive containers and trying to install 10.6.3 into them off my generic SL disk. Initially I tried the "10.6 Snow Leopard (32-bit)" template since that had worked previously (whereas the 64-bit one had allowed installation fine, but lost the mouse once the VM restarted). However, on this day even the 32-bit one hung the installer. I therefore went "down" to the generic 32-bit template, and that worked.

Note that during this day, whenever an installer hung I waited a decent amount of time to confirm that it had (sometimes half an hour or more), and then not only deleted the drive container and configuration, but uninstalled VB and manually removed everything to do with VB from my hard disk, then restarted the computer before reinstalling VB and trying again.

What am I missing?

I don't know about what you're missing, but we are definitely light on the details. "I have a printer" isn't quite detailed.

1. I'd like to see the "recipe" of the VM. Right-click on the VM, select "Show in Finder". The file that comes up is your .vbox (the settings of the VM). ZIP it and attach it to your response.
2. How is your printer attached? USB? Network? Brand and model please.
3. What are your network settings that you've tried? I'll see your current one (if you attach the .vbox), but I'd like to know what you've tried and it failed.

1 VM "recipe" attached.
2 There are two printers. I tried first with the laser (FUJI XEROX DocuPrint CP215 w), which is networked. Secondly I tried with an inkjet which is attached to the host computer via USB (EPSON Stylus CX9300F).
The networked one provided a printout of its settings (produced by pressing buttons on the printer itself); I scanned them and tried to attach them but the file size is too big. I don't know how much help it will be to you, but if you ask specific questions I can try to answer them.
3 I didn't try any network settings in the guest. I wouldn't dare change anything in there. It works sufficiently so that I can have shared folders, and I wouldn't risk breaking that -- without shared folders (and in the absence of any guest additions) the guest is useless.

Thanks for your response, I can see that you're clearly someone who is pretty involved here, and I appreciate your attention.

[socratis]

Goodness, I didn't realise I was writing a Wikipedia page, sorry

That was a good one, thanks for the laughs!

You should be using the specific "10.6 Snow Leopard (64-bit)" template. I haven't seen this one failing.

I'll have to correct myself here. I've seen it failing multiple times. What I really intended to say is that I haven't seen it failing in the 5.x series.

VM "recipe" attached.

One thing I noticed in your setup is that you're using a very low setting for the VRAM. 5 MB is really low, I'd go for either 32 or 64 MB. Not sure if it needs it, just playing it safe over here...

And let's focus on the issue that you're having. Printer installation. Your network settings indicate that you're using NAT. If you want your VM to be part of your network (thus having direct access to your Fuji printer) you should switch to "Bridged". That way your VM is just like another computer on the network. NOTE FOR WIRELESS: Bridged and wireless don't always play nice. Bridged networking is outside the WLAN specification. It may or may not work. Some combinations of Routers/Access Points, WLAN cards and drivers work, some don't. See: Bridging & Wifi - Supported hardware. For example, it works fine in my home, but not in my office. Same laptop, same VM.

I wouldn't dare change anything in there. It works sufficiently so that I can have shared folders

Well, if you're having "shared folders" (as it is defined in the VirtualBox lingo) you're the first one that I've heard of. The reason is that shared folders come only after you've installed the Guest Additions (GAs) for the guest, and since there are no GAs for OSX guests that can't happen, by definition. What you most probably are referring to is a true network share, i.e. shares that would work in the real world between two physical computers. Now, I don't see how you could have done that with NAT only which is a little bit puzzling. Could you shed some light into this? What exactly are you referring too when you're talking about shared folders?

For your Epson printer, which is connected to your host via USB, you should enable Printer Sharing on your host. Then your guest should see the shared printer as a network printer.

One thing that you could do is to enable multiple network modes for your VM. For example, I have 4 network cards in every VM that I create. 1) Host-Only, 2) Internal, 3) Bridged and 4) NAT. That way I have all the possible network options available and I simply connect/disconnect the "cable" (from the Network settings).

[SkiAddict1]

You should be using the specific "10.6 Snow Leopard (64-bit)" template. I haven't seen this one failing.

I'll have to correct myself here. I've seen it failing multiple times. What I really intended to say is that I haven't seen it failing in the 5.x series.

I wouldn't know about that. Since my host is 10.6.8, I don't have access to VB 5.x.

One thing I noticed in your setup is that you're using a very low setting for the VRAM. 5 MB is really low, I'd go for either 32 or 64 MB. Not sure if it needs it, just playing it safe over here...

I simply used the settings which the "wizard" suggested to me. I was trying to get the damn thing to let me (1) install a system at all that (2) was at all useful (i.e. had a mouse), not do anything fancy. Frankly, having had a week ago a perfectly good VM based on the "10.6 Snow Leopard (32-bit)" template and then having it go nuts on me (to the extent that I had to throw it away and waste an entire day doing what I described in the previous post -- including finding that the template no longer worked), simply because I tweaked a few settings recommended in a post by someone who clearly knows what they are doing, I'm now extremely wary about doing anything at all different from the "wizard" settings. I now have a copy of my working VM, so I will try what you propose, but that's how I'm currently feeling about VB. I'll let you know if I discover anything worth reporting from trying it.

Question: why is increasing the VRAM "playing it safe"?

And let's focus on the issue that you're having. Printer installation. (...) If you want your VM to be part of your network (thus having direct access to your Fuji printer) you should switch to "Bridged".

OK, I made a second adapter in the VM settings, made it Bridged, got it working inside the guest. (I gave it a Manual TCP/IP address -- different from the VB default one -- and set the router address to be the address of the physical router, as opposed to my host machine as in the VB default one.) In Print & Fax Preferences on the guest, I could then see both printers so I set them both up. The Fuji one (shared on network) had two entries, one just saying Bonjour and the other one saying Bonjour Shared. Initially I selected the Bonjour one; the guest thought printing had succeeded although nothing came out of the printer. Removing this printer and selecting the Bonjour Shared one resulted in printing working. Printing to the Epson worked.

I wouldn't dare change anything in there. It works sufficiently so that I can have shared folders

Well, if you're having "shared folders" (as it is defined in the VirtualBox lingo) you're the first one that I've heard of.

OK, I was using those words a little sloppily. I should have put quote marks around them. What I meant was that I had discovered a way of getting the host and guest to communicate at all. All I did was use Go->Connect To Server and put in the "router"'s address from the Network Preferences. With File Sharing set up on my host, of course.

One thing that you could do is to enable multiple network modes for your VM. For example, I have 4 network cards in every VM that I create. 1) Host-Only, 2) Internal, 3) Bridged and 4) NAT. That way I have all the possible network options available and I simply connect/disconnect the "cable" (from the Network settings).

Thanks for this idea, I did it and it worked. (With just NAT and Bridged, not the other two.) In order to know that my Bridged adapter was the one responsible for getting printing to work, I turned the other one off during my tests. Interestingly, even though printing worked via Printer Sharing on my host, no way no how could I get the guest to connect to the host in the Finder! I tried everything including both options displayed in the Sharing Preferences on my host.

Thanks Socratis for your help, I've now got printing working in the guest. I find it hard to believe everyone else out there is sufficiently clued to know what was necessary. In any case, others encountering this same brick wall will at least perhaps find this thread and hopefully find it useful.

[socratis]

I wouldn't know about that. Since my host is 10.6.8, I don't have access to VB 5.x.

Oops, you're right, forgot about that. That was actually the reason that I had to update mine as well from 10.6.8 to 10.9.5...

I'm now extremely wary about doing anything at all different from the "wizard" settings.

Well, here's what I do in cases like that. If the "change" is something simple like changing the template, the network or a USB filter, I simply undo it. If the change involves something bigger, like testing a system-altering command, I take a snapshot. If things don't go as planned, I revert to the last saved snapshot. If things go as planned, I delete the earlier snapshot and I'm left with my (now) permanent modifications. So far, I haven't been disappointed. But be careful not to let your snapshot get too carried away because of the potential of things going wrong.

Question: why is increasing the VRAM "playing it safe"?

Well, I have my guests at 1280x1024x32, which translates to 5 MB exactly. I don't know the implementation details of VirtualBox as far as the display is concerned, but I've heard that it might be doing double-buffering to improve performance. Hence, I put it a little higher.

I've now got printing working in the guest.

Well, I'm glad it worked out.

[SkiAddict1]

I'm now extremely wary about doing anything at all different from the "wizard" settings.

Well, here's what I do in cases like that. If the "change" is something simple like changing the template, the network or a USB filter, I simply undo it.

Ah, "simply". Like "just". I tried undoing the changes -- but that didn't work. The guest was still hosed. Now do you understand a little better why I'm damn wary of fiddling with VB these days?

If the change involves something bigger, like testing a system-altering command, I take a snapshot. If things don't go as planned, I revert to the last saved snapshot. If things go as planned, I delete the earlier snapshot and I'm left with my (now) permanent modifications. So far, I haven't been disappointed. But be careful not to let your snapshot get too carried away because of the potential of things going wrong.

I noticed the Snapshot feature the other day. Since that awful experience, I've been doing a similar thing: shutting down the VM and making a backup of the entire machine's folder in the Finder. I hadn't yet discovered snapshots, and I figured I could trust my copies.

Question: why is increasing the VRAM "playing it safe"?

Well, I have my guests at 1280x1024x32, which translates to 5 MB exactly. I don't know the implementation details of VirtualBox as far as the display is concerned, but I've heard that it might be doing double-buffering to improve performance. Hence, I put it a little higher.

My guest is also at 1280x1024x32. I tried it at 32MB and it made no discernable difference to performance, so I set it back down to 5 (which is what the "wizard" suggested at creation). <shrug>

I've now got printing working in the guest.

Well, I'm glad it worked out.

Thanks again

[socratis]

I tried undoing the changes -- but that didn't work. The guest was still hosed.

OK, I'm not quite sure why you've had such a "bad experience" with VirtualBox to justify your thinking. I mean, if you change the guest template, you try to boot the guest, it crashes and then you change the template back, your guest is hosed? Really? If you have a known step-by-step way of achieving this, please share.

I'll give it to you, that OSX guests are finicky to say the least, but, they work (not for anything 3D or 2D related due to the lack of GAs). It just needs a little bit of patience and a little bit of reading. I've had problems with OSX guests, but that was mostly in order to get them up and running, not afterwards (except a stubborn 10.5 guest that did not want to get updated; that was a pain, but there is a workaround).

shutting down the VM and making a backup of the entire machine's folder in the Finder. I hadn't yet discovered snapshots, and I figured I could trust my copies.

That's the best way to keep your VM safe. Don't get confused though (as many people do) and think that snapshots are backups. They're not. There have been many horror stories with complete data loss from people that thought they understood the way that snapshots work. Your "whole folder backup" is the best known method, bar an off-computer backup.