Comments on: Installing Lion and Mountain Lion instead of “Imaging”

By: Digna Connie

Digna Connie — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:30:23 +0000

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By: Am Berg, Punkt Acht | MacSysAdmin

Am Berg, Punkt Acht | MacSysAdmin — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:55:47 +0000

[...] mehr Installer statt Images; mehr dazu sicher am 12. Sept. 2012 um 16:10 [...]

By: Creating Recovery Partitions in Deploy Studio « Mac in Edu

Creating Recovery Partitions in Deploy Studio « Mac in Edu — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:13:42 +0000

[...] which is great for a wide number of deployment tools – or – use the thin-imaging or no-imaging technique where Apple’s own installer handles the magic behind the scenes. But for now [...]

By: MacTech Presentation notes and links « Managing OS X

MacTech Presentation notes and links « Managing OS X — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:01:20 +0000

[...] Installing instead of imaging: http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/installing-lion-and-mountain-lion-instead-of-imaging/ [...]

By: GregN

GregN — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 22:04:22 +0000

It might be possible, but would require writing a new tool from scratch. Certainly not as simple as a tweak of createOSXinstallPkg, which really only sets up Apple’s Lion/Mountain Lion installer to run.

By: Rolf

Rolf — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:43:39 +0000

We looked at Munki (GREAT TOOL ) but for us it’s a bit over the top, also creating packages for all the software is not an option right now (not enough staff). Your Installer really made us very happy and we figured that if we prepare a full dmg and just could use it to deploy or update an existing system this would be great. I guess this is not possible because an image is designed for block copy installs, and we need file copy so that we don’t overwrite user homes (am I correct ?). Can you think of any way to accomplish what we would like without repackaging or Munki, starting from just an image, using your installer trick ?

By: GregN

GregN — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:48:56 +0000

Why not package your modifications (such as the modifications to the User Template German.lproj folders), additional apps, etc and add them to the list of packages to install?
Or implement a solution like Munki.

By: Rolf

Rolf — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:26:02 +0000

Hello Greg

We love this tool already !
While using and testing it we discovered that the OS X updater overwrites the User Template folder (as it should). We use custom German.lproj folders and would like to have them intact. So we came up with the idea that it would be great if we could use your tool to deploy our already finished ML.dmg inculding lots of new Apps as well…
Would that be possible ?
Or do you have another idea how to pack a complete dmg into a package for deployment ?

By: GregN

GregN — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:36:13 +0000

“The PKG method above is technically clever, but doesn’t allow bare-metal installs via NetBoot, because it essentially installs the installer.”

Sure it does. See this post for one method: http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/installing-mac-os-x-10-8-x-on-an-erased-hard-drive-using-deploystudio-and-createosxinstallpkg/

Of course, if NetBoot installs are the only way you are installing Lion/Mountain Lion, there are other, more efficient options, like creating a NetInstall set using Apple’s System Image Utility.

“Nor does it allow a machine to be “refreshed”.”

Yes, it does as well. The technique you describe above (removing everything except /Users) would would with a Lion/Mountain Lion installation package as well.

By: TGB

TGB — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:28:46 +0000

Our entire imaging process is based around exactly that: for everything at the top of the drive, if it’s not “Users”, delete it. Then do a non-erasing install of an OS dmg, eg: created by FileWave Lightning. This allows us to upgrade even 10.5 directly to 10.7 or 10.8, or recover a malfunctioning machine.

When someone reports a fault, we won’t do any more than minimal fault investigation before simply running an image refresh. User’s data remains exactly where it always was, nothing needs to be backed up, old OS and apps are stripped off, SOE apps and system configuration are restored to known state, user pops open their catalogue and installs optional software again. Set it going, tell the user to go to lunch and it’ll be ready to use when they get back.

The PKG method above is technically clever, but doesn’t allow bare-metal installs via NetBoot, because it essentially installs the installer. Nor does it allow a machine to be “refreshed”.