dscl and InstaDMG

So after an interesting perusal of the dscl man page, combined with some poking around in the SIU bundle, it turns out that you CAN use dscl on a non booted volume. In fact it's really slick. Simply add a -f "path/to/dslocal/nodes/Default" and a "localonly" option and you can use standard dscl APIs to talk to "/Local/Target" behold: dscl /usr/bin/dscl -f "/Volumes/InstaDMG/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default" localonly -create /Local/Target/Users/admin dscl /usr/bin/dscl -f "/Volumes/InstaDMG/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default" localonly -append /Local/Target/Users/admin RealName "Administrator" dscl /usr/bin/dscl -f "/Volumes/InstaDMG/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default" localonly -append /Local/Target/Users/admin UserShell "/bin/bash" etc.. reading the man page you'll see that dscl creates another instance of the DirectoryServices daemon and then goes to work on that folder structure. You of course could push the files all the same, but this way you get future resistant supported behavior. Combined with creating the right shadow hash and you're on the way. With this method, the system generates the GUID for you. In fact. If you want an interesting look at how the imaging process works, you may be surprised to find that in 10.5, it's mostly done by shell scripts hidden in the automator actions! If you have the server admin tools installed, check out /Applications/Server/System Image Utility.app/Contents/Library/Automator/Create Image.action/Contents/Resources/ In particular, the createAdmin.sh outlines creating an account on a non-booted dslocal folder. Also createNetRestore.sh basically makes a NetInstall image from a booted volume. I'm sure an astute user could adjust it to work with an already ASR'd image. -Pete-