[larkost]

Right now you are going to run into two problems:

1) Even using InstaUp2Date there is no way of specifying the installer dvd image to use. I have always wanted to change this, but felt that I needed to wait until 2.0 to make this change. I have a clear idea of how to do this, and it is a solid goal for 2.0 (no news on that… just not enough free time).

2) Right now you should not install 10.5.x while running on 10.6. I have not figured out how to get the installer to run properly with chroot jails from 10.6, and it is virtually required from 10.6. Similarly the 10.5 installer does not know how to handle everything in the 10.6 install packages, so that will not work either. I am aiming to get chroot jails working in 10.6, but it is going to take some time, and will probably wind up slipping to 2.0

And in all likelihood the first serios time I will have to really work on 2.0 is going to be durring the holiday break. I have about a week of forced down time, and since I am not traveling for the holiday (and my girlfriend will be working) I will have time for that and some work on my part of a Macworld presentation. Hopefully I am not distracted durring that period, and can get some stuff done.

And on your InstaUp2Date question currently the only ways is to make all of your catalog file references be http:// links, and share the packages (wrapped in dmgs) on a http server. It will then create local copies of these files. Unfortunately the base image is not included in this.

I do have some ideas to allow for share points in the future, but have to think that through some more.

[larkost]

Assuming that you are not going to have escaped ‘/’ characters in your path:
[code]PackageName=$( /usr/bin/basename “$PackagePath” )[/code] (not tested… just written)

[larkost]

I posted recently that I was not going to answer questions that don’t include the target and the host os (along with the rev number wich you kindly included), but am going to break that. As it happens it is directly relevant:

You are probably building your 10.5 image on a 10.6 computer. Because of the changes in the installer I can’t use some of the shielding tricks that I created to handle both the iLife updaters (still not completely working), and 10.5.7+. The upshot of it is that at this point installing 10.5.6+ from 10.6.x will result in images broken much the way you describe. No fix for the forceable future (I am not sure it is something I can work around… I have some bugs in to Apple on it, but they might not consider them worth fixing).

[larkost]

That exclude is a hack on my part… it is (low) on my list to create a “createUser” factory so we aren’t going about this in a hackish way, and re-do it so it is more complete. But since createUser’s actions all happen in the scripts anyways, you can go ahead and use the same id for multiple installs. You just won’t get nice receipts for it (which you wouldn’t anyways, since we are not injecting the script-changed files).

[larkost]

I would like to get back to the point where you can install an older os version from a newer one (specifically 10.5 while booted from 10.6), but the 10.6 installer is killing that at the moment, and I either have to hack my way though the darkness, or Apple has to fix the bugs.

[larkost]

After a little testing, I am not seeing this issue on 10.6.1.

Ok… I just realized that we could be talking at cross purposes, since in the limited time I have for InstaDMG I am working only on 10.6 (both as host and as target). So, when anyone reports anything, I am going to absolutely need them to give the following information:

Host OS version
Target OS version
Revision number of InstaDMG

And if you are on less than rev210, I am probably going to just ignore the post altogether (this means it does not get fixed if it is broken).

[larkost]

I just checked the files on my computers (installed by hand, not an image), and on all of the files at my samples of these locations have been links, just like the files are on your image. It seems to me that these files on the image are correct, but somehow what the “repair permissions” code is looking up is wrong. All of my systems have been the host system for InstaDMG at one point or another, so someone should check this on a clean 10.6.1 system.

That is solidly worth looking into, but I don’t think that there is a significant problem here. It looks to me like we are missing the data from an update (probably 10.6.1) where things got moved. We have the actual moves, but not the records of them. Does anyone know what “repair permissions” is looking at nowadays? And does anyone want to bet that this data got written to the boot volume? (*sigh*…)

Now on the subject of “is repair permissions worth running”, I come down solidly on the “no” side. With the exception of some bad behavior with printing a while ago (10.2?) that got fixed that way I have never seen repair permissions turn up, or fix, and valid problems. I have seen it prompt people to find problems where there are none.

[larkost]

Did you use the createUser package as a template, or did you build your own from scratch. If it is the later, then you are probably creating the user against ‘/’ rather than $3 (the target). If you are using the latest version of InstaDMG and 1.5 then this is solved for you, if you are on 10.6, then unfortunately I don’t have that solution working for 10.6 yet, so you have to do things the right way.

Edit: Ok… you said 10.5.8, but is that your host or target os? And what version of InstaDMG are you running?

[larkost]

You missed my point. You can’t include iLife itself because people will be using different sources. My point was to make it clear that this is the updates, not iLife itself.

[larkost]

Three questions/comments:

1) Shouldn’t it be iLife09updates, since the iLife suite is not included in the catalog file?

2) I thought that the ARD update was part of the 10.6.1 update… I will fix the catalog file up on the developer site momentarily.

3) Why host this externally? If you want to become the maintainer for those catalog files why not ask for write permissions on the svn site?

[larkost]

There are lots of things that don’t make sense here:

1) If you are running rev212 then you should not need to turn off chroots, as that version does so automatically when running on 10.6…

2) Are you booted from 10.6? In order to install 10.6 you have to be booted from 10.6. If this is not the case, then it will not ever work, and that would make sense of everything, including the fact that your logs do not look like my logs. The 10.6 installer program has be re-written, and there is no reason to believe that the 10.5 installer is capable of installing 10.6.

3) Have you been messing with the default values? The free-space reported on your target dmg is way too low otherwise. There is no reason to go messing with that value. The space on the initial DMG is like Monopoly money: not really worth anything. Playing with this number will not save you any real disk space, and will just get you in trouble at some point.

I am going to look into disabling 10.6 installs while running 10.5…

[larkost]

As I have mentioned in other threads, 1.5 does not really work well on 10.6 at this point. However, it seems that it might work if you use the ‘-r’ option (disable chroot). The main problem is that Apple has changed the way the /usr/sbin/installer works enough that it breaks in chroot. so disabling the chroot jails will solve that, but then re-open all of the problems that the chroot jails solved in the first place. I have bugs in with Apple on this, and need to re-test a lot of things now that they have settled down for a little while.

And I have been watching the development of what Apple is calling the “NetRestore” track of SIU (System Image Utility). I talked my way onto the MacOS X Server 10.6 seeding group so I could watch it, but have been disappointed the whole way through. I still yet have to build a successful image with it with only minimal additions (iLife ’09 and MS Office). I had been hoping that SIU could replace InstaDMG since I heard about it last January, but have yet to think that this is going to happen.

I hope to go back and start slowly hacking on InstaDMG again in the next few weeks.

[larkost]

First off: I know that the later builds (200 and so) were failing entirely on the Snow Leopard seedings. They made some changes in the installer that completely break with chroot jails. I have bugs filled, and they are still outstanding. I am not completely sure how to handle this without regressing to failing on a number of packages. At some point I will take another stab at it, but it is going to be a while.

Actually SIU is part of the MacOS X Server Admin Tools, which you can download for free from Apple with no dependancies on MacOS X Server at all. You might even be able to use SIU on MacOS X 10.5 (but I am not going to bet on it working). You can download them here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL914

I wrangled my way on to the ‘Server seeding group just so that I could watch that part of SIU mature. Unfortunately it had a really rocky path, and I need to run a test tonight (like right now) to make sure that the bugs I reported against it actually got fixed in the late-stage builds. For instance iLife’09 would kill a build.

I had high hopes that Apple would take away the need for InstaDMG, but unfortunately I don’t feel that that is the case. For very simple installs, it will probably work just fine, but for complex ones it really does not fit the bill. For example:

1) You can’t re-order packages. The order you add them in the item is the order they will get installed. You have to delete everything after the point you want to insert a package in to get it there.

2) I don’t believe that they are using anything like chroot jails to handle non-distribution scripts that reference /.

3) I think that they still have the same problems that InstaDMG has with distribution scripts like iLife updaters.

[larkost]

Inside the image there are no network interfaces defined. Those get setup on first boot by the normal first-run scripts. If you are disabling those (so you don’t get asked to create a “first user”) then you have to do the work yourself with that line.

[larkost]

The question is not whether they have the right to the code I have already written and contributed (it is clear that they have not right of ownership, and are not claiming otherwise). The issue is with further work. The contract I signed as part of the employment agreement says that my work (while under the contract) is their property. So I would have no right to give further work to InstaDMG (or other projects) without their ok.

[Author]

Posts