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I have an external drive that I use as a “booter” for imaging and troubleshooting. The drive uses Apple Partition Map to make it “Universal” and has Mac OS X 10.5.5 installed (using this technique: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2595).

Weird thing is, the new MacBook Pro can’t boot off of this drive! If I connect the drive and specify the “booter” as the startup disk, the computer goes into a loop trying to startup (black screen/gray screen/black screen/gray screen/…/…)

This is the first time this has happened to me with new hardware. I’m assuming it’ll work once 10.5.6 comes out — but just wanted to find out if anyone else is having this problem?

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@Dee
That seems to do the trick!
It took a while to test because both my MacBook Pros were at 10.5.4 so I had to re-install 10.5.0 before the 10.5.2 MBP disc would work.

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I’m realizing that this is probably a problem with the hardware and/or 10.5.4 because I did some tests (installing Mac OS X 10.5 from the install DVD) and getting the same results.

But, to answer your question Patrick, Desktop & Screen Saver Pref Pane is fine.

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In this environment, I only have local users, but it does seem to happen in all accounts.
I don’t think it’s a setting in the image since I’m having the same problem with three images (two setup on iMacs, the third a “clean” InstaDMG image) — unless there’s something about the way the updates & Install DVD come together that isn’t good with the MBP — but that seems unlikely to me.

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[QUOTE][u]Quote by: cooperkevind[/u][p]Question about moving the .plist files to the new machine… In both Nigels post on AFP and Greg Neagels post on word press they show a script to add the MAC address to the the newly added dscl files….. But I can’t get either to work. How are other people managing this? [/p][/QUOTE]

Kevin —
When I was experimenting with MCX, I ended up getting the MAC address into the dscl files using the following loginhook:
[code]
#!/bin/sh

storedMacAddress=`/usr/bin/dscl . -read /Computers/localhost ENetAddress | cut -f2 -d ” “`

macAddress=`/sbin/ifconfig en0 | /usr/bin/grep ‘ether’ | /usr/bin/sed “s/^[[:space:]]ether //” | cut -f1 -d ” “`

if [ “$storedMacAddress” != “$macAddress” ] ; then

sudo dscl . -create /Computers/localhost ENetAddress $(ifconfig en0 |grep ether | awk ‘{print $2}’)

fi[/code]

The loginhook is installed by a package in the NetRestore post-actions folder. It’s turned on by the following script, which is also run as a NetRestore post-action:
[code]#!/bin/bash

# adds login hook to com.apple.loginwindow
defaults write “$1″/var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /etc/login.hook[/code]

At first, I was concerned that this was adding an un-necessary loginhook to my systems, but realized that for my environment, running this check at startup could actually be helpful — because if I decide to change the MCX settings on a machine (which is not managed by a server, only by these local settings) I can simply swap out the dscl plist(s) and upon reboot the preferences are set the way I want them.

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In the end, on this project, I used dslocal & WGM to set all these preferences only to find that we couldn’t use WGM in my environment because of issues with the way that WGM deals with computer names and a crunch for time. This time around, I ended up making a “half-way” image with InstaDMG then had to restore a machine, make some tweaks, and capture using NetRestore for the final product.

As a reference for others: I used fseventer [url]http://fernlightning.com/doku.php?id=software:fseventer:start[/url] to figure out where changes were made, which was very helpful.

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Instead of a script that keeps track of updates for you (which change pretty often), I think an InstaDMG wiki would be even more helpful.

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Patrick (or anybody else reading this for that matter!), I hope you’ll have some insight here:

I created a package called localhost.pkg that puts the localhost.plist created using WGM into /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/computers/ on the destination HD. This package gets installed as a NetRestore Post-Action.

I’ve been able to confirm that the plist is in place after restoring a computer.

I’ve also got a few NetRestore Post-Action scripts: one to hide files that should be hidden (hide_files.sh), one to put the right MAC Address into the localhost.plist file upon restore (localhost_config.sh), and one to rename the destination hard drive (zzz_rename_target.sh).

The tricky part is this: The post-actions are running (and the the HD is getting renamed successfully) but the localhost_config.sh script isn’t working. The MAC Address in localhost.plist remains incorrect after restore. However, when I setup a loginhook on the machine after it was imaged (see my above post), the managed preferences worked perfectly.

I’m posting my code below… hopefully someone will see a mistake?

[code]
#!/bin/sh
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin export PATH

hwAddress=`ifconfig en0 |grep ether | awk ‘{ print $2 }’`

/usr/bin/dscl -f “$1″/private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default -create /Computers/localhost ENetAddress “$hwAddress”[/code]

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We have use a key-served site-license for Adobe CS3, so this may be different from your setup, but here’s how I got it working:

A combination of logGen, pkgGen, and IceBerg based on this workflow: [url]http://blog.irisink.com/?p=106[/url] This article from irisink explains how to use logGen and pkgGen to capture changes to the system, but I found that Leopard PackageMaker (and InstallEase) both screwed up while packaging CS3. So, instead, I used IceBerg to package everything in the “fauxroot” folder created by pkgGen.

This may be obvious, but I ran logGen to make a before capture of the system before installing, ran another after installing Adobe Design Premium and entering the SN. Then I ran pkgGen on the difference and used that to create an IceBerg package project.

I made a second package for Adobe Web Standard using the same method. With this setup, you MUST install the Design Premium package first or neither will work properly.

I’m in the process now of packaging updates & our key-server app. The un-keyed, site-licensed projects are working well.

Also, IceBerg lets you choose to make your package contents “Project Relative” or “Absolute Path.” I chose to make them all Project Relative, and this worked for me. Also, in the Settings area, I checked “Follow Symbolic Links” and chose “Root Authorization.”

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Patrick, again, thanks for the tip. I am setting up some post-actions based on Bombich’s example scripts for NetRestore right now. I think this will really simplify my deployment process.

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Patrick, thanks for the clarification. I use the following command to setup the loginhook:
[code]sudo defaults write /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /etc/login.hook[/code]

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@vogtstev
Did the script you posted above work? I’m curious because I’m trying to setup something similar right now…
The first go around, my script (below) screwed up permissions and I no longer had access to anything in my home folder… I’m re-building right now using something based on your script above. (This time I’ll cd into “$3” and pre-pend “$3” instead of $3).

[code]#!/bin/bash

# Show Full directory path in Finder Windows
defaults write $3/Users/osxadmin/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES[/code]

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@Theilgaard
I’m curious how you’re implementing the firmware updates… I tried adding them to my AppleUpdates folder, but found that they were all installed on every machine I imaged, and not sure if they were applied. Are you having all of them installed (put into /Applications/Utilities) and then running the appropriate ones after imaging?

Esther

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@jdyck: Based on your comment above, I tried IceBerg (using logGen and PkgGen based on this workflow: http://blog.irisink.com/?p=106) and finally got my Adobe CS3 packages working, thanks for the tip!

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@pepijn: How did you get PackageMaker 2 installed on a Leopard Mac?

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