How to push/restore/install an InstaDMG image many restrictions

[sgstuart]

Hi All,
I am hoping this is an okay place to ask this question as well. I am enjoying the ability of creating the InstaDMG images (and I assume they are all good), but I do not really understand how to place it into a partion or mac. The main reason why is we have many restrictions. We do not have an OSX Server, and will not be allowed to get one. I believe that eliminates a good majority of options (NetRestore, Deploy Studio, and others). We are also not allowed to allowed to purchase any new software (at least at this time).

What we have. 2 ARD Task Servers which are actually just running standard OSX 10.5 (not server). We have multiple desktops and laptops that are all currently running the latest 10.5 with software. We have a few firewire drives. We have access too many Windows Servers (which I can not see helping).

Is there a way to push the InstaDMG from the same machine the ARD Task Server as is to the other mac’s though out our environment? I assume “no”.

I am pretty sure that there is a way to put the image on the firewire drive and push/restore the image from there, but I do not understand how to do that. Do I just need the .DMG image(s) on there (can I have more than one?)? Does the firewire drive need to be bootable on its own? Once I have the drive the way it needs to be. What do I need to do? Can you boot from the machine in 10.5, and use Disk Utility to overwrite itself with 10.6? Any help, or links on this type of how to would be great.

Thanks,
Steven Stuart

[Greg Neagle]

Bootable FireWire and/or USB drive containing a copy of your image.
Boot from it.
Use Disk Utility’s restore feature to restore the image to the internal disk.

DeployStudio can also be run from an external FW/USB2 drive, no OS X server needed.
See the local deployment configuration in the pdf here: http://www.deploystudio.com/Doc/Entries/2009/10/10_Architecture_files/DSS.architecture.20080114.pdf

[Allister Banks]

Hey Mr. Stuart,
DeployStudio is the new hotness, and via firewire, flashdrive(a little larger than 2GB )or netboot, it can leverage your windows fileshares for its repository, as made reference to in the pdf Mr. Neagle was kind enough to link to. Now the netboot part is what makes DeployStudio so very, very cool, since it pops out a VNC-able NetBoot image with your specific config settings, so here’s a start for your googling to get that served without server:

http://coeexchange.com/?p=1521

The details described in the post above should make it apparent to the other admins in your environment(who are limiting your mac server possibilities) that unless they’re serving PXE boot(and they might want to – it’s a good idea for bootstrapping identical machines, and DeployStudio can handle PC’s AFAIK) your netboot server will answer bdsp and that’s all. Of course, we wouldn’t immediately jump into multicast complexity and overloading switches by booting and pushing large images around.
10.5 Server(or maybe even 10.4) doesn’t have to do anything more than serve netboot images and it should be capable you for the foreseeable future, perhaps you might find someone who has an unused license to “gift” you. Eval licenses of 10.6 are available for a pretty long trial, as well.

And the one-liner I use when I’ve got the machine I want to image target-disk-mode attached(say the to-be-imaged HD’s name is ‘Destination’: )
sudo asr restore –source ./instadmg/OutputFiles/10-3-7.dmg –target /Volumes/ Destination –erase –verbose –noprompt –noverify –buffers 1 –buffersize 32m –puppetstrings

Allister

[sgstuart]

Hi gneagle & Allister,
Thank you both very much. I will look into everything that both of you said in more detail tomorrow. I did look at a pdf from Deploy Studio (I am guessing not the same one) one of the requirements was a machine running OSX server. So the idea of being able to run that from a firewire drive is excellent. I also like that one-liner, which I assume must be done from a bootable firewire.

Thanks,
Steven Stuart

[Author]

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