Help with use

[jstrauss]

I hope I’m posting to the right place…

I understand the methodology of InstaDMG but I’m having some technical issues using it.

1) After I run the script to create the ASR image and deploy it to a machine, none of my updates or createUser packages have installed; all I am left with is a clean install of what seems to be the install DVD image. How do I ensure all my updates will apply and all my users will be created so at first boot a user will immediately be presented with a login screen?

2) In the InstaDMG information on AFP548, I’m told I can package settings and deploy them to the computer. I’d like to package energy saver settings, DVD region settings, and other settings that I have to touch the computer for, but I don’t know how to turn those settings into packages. Is it packaging the .plist for those settings and deploying it? I don’t know Mac too well in-depth yet.

Thanks so much for your help! In the last year of me being a Mac sysadmin this site has been an invaluable resource. 🙂

[Patrick Fergus]

1) Can you post the contents of the package installation log from your run of InstaDMG? It should be named something like “08-06-10.pkg.log”.

2) How much Mac infrastructure do you have to play with? You can bake a lot of settings into an image, but you should strongly consider using some sort of central management (Mac OS X Server Open Directory and WorkGroup Manager) to control your machines. If you have a management server, you can tweak the clients in many ways that doesn’t require you to touch each machine. If you don’t have the ability to run OS X Server, you can:

– Package up the settings (plists) that you need and install them all, but keep in mind you might be overwriting something that might be important.
– Create a payload-free installer package–this is essentially a installer package that does nothing except run a script.

– Patrick

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