Using a Script to Change VM Options

When you need to change configuration settings of all virtual machines that are already registered on a Mac computer, you can use the Parallels desktop command-line interface. To do so, you first need to create a script to perform a desired configuration modification. You can then execute the script on a Mac computer using one of the remote Mac management tools described earlier in this chapter.

The following is a script example that disables the auto pausing option for all virtual machines registered on a Mac computer:

for i in $( prlctl list -a --info | grep "ID" | sed 's/.....//;s/.$//' ); do 
  prlctl set $i --pause-idle off 
done

The script above uses the prlctl list command to first obtains a list of registered virtual machines and then (inside the loop) sets the --pause-idle option for every VM to "off", which disables pausing of an idle virtual machine.

The complete command-line reference is documented in the Parallels Desktop Developer's Guide.