Imaging Workstations over a Network…how?

[MDiddy]

I’m pretty new to Mac OS X server, and I just got a job as a Network Assitiant for a college running a Jaguar Server on a network of about 60-80 Macs. The Macs are currently running 10.1.5 & OS 9.2.2, and I’d like to setup a master drive image for the workstations, and then be able to restore the machines over the network from the server in case of a problem.

Currently, we use Carbon Copy Cloaner and physically go to the machines and connect up a FireWire drive to restore them, but I’m sure they’res a better way.

How could I accomplish this using what we have?

[Cabbage]

[quote:eb0e14eedd]Currently, we use Carbon Copy Cloaner and physically go to the machines and connect up a FireWire drive to restore them, but I’m sure they’res a better way.[/quote:eb0e14eedd]

You can do it that way but use NetRestore and do a block copy off the FireWire disk. It is much faster then CCCing all the files from a FW Drive. For me a basic 10.2.6 image takes about 90 seconds.

You can also use Network Install since you have Jaguar Server.

[bossa nova]

[quote:0ea51b9845=”Cabbage”]
You can do it that way but use NetRestore and do a block copy off the FireWire disk. It is much faster then CCCing all the files from a FW Drive. For me a basic 10.2.6 image takes about 90 seconds.
[/quote:0ea51b9845]

Cabbage…what do you mean block copy? …and would the following example take longer then what you are discribing?

MDiddy…I don’t know if this will be better then what Cabbage is referring to but go into terminal and search for ASR, you can do a restore from a web server by doing the following…(it has to be an apache web server)

Command in terminal:
asr -source http://IPADDRESS/DiskImage.dmg -target /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/ -erase -noprompt

where “DiskImage.dmg” is the source and “Macintosh HD” would be the name of the machine you are restoring to.

..go to terminal and type “man asr” minus the quotes and it will explain it better. See if this is more convenient.

[Cabbage]

>>Cabbage…what do you mean block copy?
I mean block copy instead of copying file by file. Block copying is much faster.

Before NetRestore was released I used to boot up off a FireWire drive that had 2 partitions. The second partion was my “image”. I could put off that partition if I wanted it to. It had all the files for OS X. I’d run CCC to copy each [i:6deed460c6]file[/i:6deed460c6] from the second partition to the hard drive I wanted.

With NetRestore I made a compressed disk image (.dmg) of the second partition. I can keep this image anywhere since you can restore a drive locally, thru AFP or over HTTP with NetRestore. With the .dmg it copies at the block level and this is much faster than copying file by file.

[bossa nova]

[quote:c6eb2817e4=”MacTroll”]NetRestore is a GUI for asr[/quote:c6eb2817e4]

…ah yes, this is good to know. I overlook this stuff lately because I am forcing myself to do all via terminal in the hopes that some day I will be ‘terminally’ proficient!

[Author]

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