[bw38]

Sorry I need to rectify my last statement. It wasn’t 775 that worked. It was 754 permissions that worked in the end. Not that I doubt 775 would work too, but no need for extra permissions if not necessary right?

[bw38]

Just wanted to confirm that this worked. The guide is incorrectly saying it needs to be set to permissions 644 when in fact it needs to be 775. At least that’s what seems to have finally worked for me.

[bw38]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: tristan_mason[/u][p]I had a similar experience until I realized I needed to tick the check box to make it executable in package maker. Then everything worked. It’s the same as the 644 bit in the terminal but the easy way.

Hope this helps.

Tristan

[/p][/QUOTE]
Tick what box? Could you show me a screenshot?

[bw38]

You don’t necessarily have to package FireFox unless you’re looking to customize it. The DMG that contains FireFox will be accepted by instadmg. It already knows what to do with it.

[bw38]

I noticed that I was able to use this patcher 0.3 on Update 14.0.1 and after creating an image with it, the hashcheck changed for the update. It was pretty strange. I created a new image and will confirm whether it changed again.

Also I haven’t gotten the other patchers to work before 0.3.

[bw38]

I tried endless to copy my catalog files but to no avail (forum detects it as spam). But based on what I’m seeing, it looks like I’m installing the iLife Support 9.04 update (comes in the 10.6 vanilla catalog) BEFORE iLife 09 is installed (included in the iLife09_update catalog). But like I said, when I boot into the image, and manually run Software Update, I get nothing showing up.

[bw38]

That’s really strange. Just today I downloaded the latest build using a 10.6.3 retail disk. I included iLife 09 and Support 9.04 installed fine. Even manually ran Software Update and it showed up clean.

[bw38]

As I understand it, it’s about optimizing your workflow and really making it easier to modify and create new images in the future.

For example my work flow consists of catalog files in the following order:
10.6_vanilla -> iLife 09 -> Base_Settings -> CompanyBaseSoftware -> LabSoftware

In Base_Settings, I keep CreateUser and ClearReg. I’m hoping to include firstboot.pkg as well but haven’t tested it out since I had problems with it a few weeks ago (I have to try the recommendations, just isn’t a priority right now).

Under CompanyBaseSoftware, I keep applications like FireFox, GIMP, Flash, Flip4Mac, Office2011, VLC Player, The Unarchiver, and Text Wrangler. I hope to include SPSS19 as well, but haven’t gotten around to testing the silent authentication installer that was recommended in a previous thread.

Under LabSoftware, I keep Final Cut Studio 3, Adobe CS5, and BBEdit 9.

The idea here is that at any point I can simply decide to build my image from CompanyBaseSoftware while easily ignoring LabSoftware. If I were doing this from one single catalog, I’d have to erase programs every time I wanted to make a change or create a specific image for someone.

I have to admit I’m not necessarily doing it this way right now. I’m more focused on getting applications packaged then optimizing the work flow. That’s easily done in a few minutes.

Hope that helps.

[bw38]

I do leave the /Users folder checked on. If I recall correctly, someone once explained to me that when copying over a folder (replacing a folder), OS X will not merge the contents, it will literally get rid of the original folder and replace it with the folder you are copying over it. So that would make someone sense as to why this is occurring. An empty /Users folder is replacing the original /Users folder hence nothing appears in that folder before boot. Some folders may appear upon boot like the Desktop folder, but that’s because certain programs re-create it.

I could be off here though. In any case, I’m going to give it a try tomorrow at work.

[bw38]

Is this like the droplet for Office 2011 where one has to drop the Office Installer on it and it will do the rest?

[bw38]

Interesting question. I haven’t followed any particular order and I’ve been using my own images that I’ve created to test them out. No problems that I can tell. Here’s my work flow:
OS X Updates
Applications (FireFox, GIMP, VLC Player, Flash, Flip4Mac, Office 2011, iLife 09)
iLife Updates
System configurations (clearReg, createUser)

Everything seems to work without any problems that I can tell. But I’m far from done. Right now as we speak I’m testing out Final Cut Studio 3 (holy cow what a huge install). I still have to add other programs like Adobe CS4, Cisco VPN software, SPSS 19. And then work through user configuration settings I want to use on all accounts.

Although it probably saves you time to leave out packages you know function, I don’t necessarily do that all the time. I feel more secure if I keep running the same packages every time along with whatever new packages I’m adding. This is particularly useful for me because every so often I find myself wiping my hard drive out and using the image I’ve just created (as mentioned earlier). I think it’s the only way to really tell if you’re going to run into problems. As an example, I had added the Cisco VPN software package to my image and thought it was working fine (so it seemed). But it wasn’t. And I ignored the fact that it wouldn’t load. Then noticed I was getting messages about a kext file missing or that has been corrupted. I was able to eliminate the problem easily and avoid future headaches since I was using the image I’m going to be deploying.

Not sure if it is helpful or not, but that’s been my experience thus far.

[bw38]

Third party software is where I put it. Works fine for me.

[bw38]

Great, I’m going to take a peek at the video and new documentation this weekend, and test it next week.

[bw38]

Andy, if you could post that detailed explanation on osxdeployment.com that would be great. Not sure why this forum considers some code in posts spam. Sometimes splitting up a post into multiple posts helps.

TheSpider, I’d like to check that video out but it says I need a username/password from PSU. Not sure if the video is available elsewhere. If it is, let me know. I’m always looking for any videos.

I am also going to check out a video about Packages from Duncan McCracken found here: http://documentation.macsysadmin.se/2010/2010doc.html but I’m not sure if that will help me or not. A few other intriguing videos as well which I’ll check out as well.

Btw I can’t thank you all enough for assisting me with all this. I know many questions I have may seem simple to you all, but you’re assistance has been incredible. And I’m sure this thread will be at least somewhat useful if anyone else decides to get into InstaDMG and has similar questions as I do. I’ve made a decent amount of progress thus far I’d say.

[bw38]

Alright so I’m getting a little lost. I’ve tried looking up on how to apply permissions to files via terminal, but the firstboot.pkg that PackageMaker includes two more packages within it and I don’t know which files to apply the permissions to. I’ve tried changing the permissions via PackageMaker itself, but that apparently didn’t work or stick.

I’ve tried researching a lot of what you guys have been saying, but I’m not very familiar with how permissions work in packages in OS X. I tried researching Greg Neagle’s post on the payload-free package template and found this link: http://groups.google.com/group/macenterprise/browse_thread/thread/41ba6a49b18d0d20?fwc=1

I understand the concept, but what I actually have to do seems alien to me. I tried using Iceberg and it isn’t very intuitive as to what I need to do with the three files included the firstboot.dmg (the edu.school.firstboot.plist, firstboot.sh, and postflight.sh).

Is there a guide on how to do this manually, step by step, like there is for PackageMaker? It would make it easier for me and anyone who doesn’t care to use an interface. Or alternatively, if there’s a guide on how to do it with Composer, that would be helpful too.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep researching and looking around to see if I can figure it out on my own.

On a side note, what exactly is meant by “$1/Contents/Resources will get me inside the package and $3/ will give me the root of the instadmg volume?” I know $3 needed to be used one one of the files for Office 2011 (volume license). Is this part of scripting or something else specific to OS X systems? I’d like to learn more about these sort of things.

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