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Best Way to Image and Deploy Dual-Boot Macintosh?
macpulse asks: "What is the best way to image and deploy dual-boot Intel Macintosh desktops in an Educational environment? Our organization is getting ready to purchase dozens of new Intel Macs for each campus and we're not sure how to proceed. With Windows XP and Dell, we've simply used Symantec's Enterprise Ghost to deploy our images. Playing with the test Intel Macs we have, we are unable to get Ghost to work with the Mac. I've also played with Bombich's NetRestore product (which is FOSS!) but without much success. I'm curious how my fellow readers have resolved this issue. Thanks!"
Yes.. You can even tri-boot.
o otCamp
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_B
appleguru.org
As long as all your hardware is the same, deploying a uniform image should be possible using simple tools that have been a part of any *nix system for decades. I don't see why you would need to purchase "enterprise" anything. First install the OSes you want on one the Macs (OSX and Linux, Solaris and OpenBSD, whatever). Configure everything as you want it to be on the image. Then boot that Mac using some medium other than the disk you just did the install to (cd boot, network boot (I imagine x86 macs can use PXE just like most intel systems)). Mount a network drive and use dd to make an image of the disk you did the install on. Then write a script for doing the re-imaging. All it would need to do would be to mount that network drive and dd the image from there to the disk. You could do checksums to make sure the transfer worked if you want to get fancy. Store this script on the pxe server or boot cd, or whatever you choose to use to boot the Macs that are getting imaged. You can even set it to autorun so all anyone doing the re-imaging has to do is put in the boot cd and reboot, or connect the Mac to be re-imaged to the same LAN as the networked server and reboot. This seams like pretty much what you would do when setting up imaging for PCs, Sun workstations, whatever. Is there something in particular about Macs that make them more difficult to work with? (I'm not a Mac user)
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
At my office, we have a master image of our desktop configuration. The image sits in a Debian box next to my desk.
When we get a new PC, we remove the drive and drop it into an external USB/IDE/SATA enclosure and connect ti to the Debian box. We DD the image onto the drive. It usually takes less than an hour per drive.
We can also image a drive across the LAN, but it's slower and we have to be present at the user's computer to boot off a KNOPPIX disc.
We have played with the idea of creating a DVD that has a cut-down debian distro and the image file. Then we can just drop in the restore disc and reboot. Come back an hour later and we're done.
You could also drop the image on the portable drive and use a boot CD to image PCs without opening them.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Taget Disk Mode .... much faster than network imaging and much easier then pulling hard drives.
By the way you can use Apple restore program ASR to create a disk that will automatically wipe and restore the machine its booted on.
PS unless you have something that would require dual booting (ie 3D PC apps) it would be much easier and more secure to use a virtual machine to run windows. (parallels or VMware Fusion).
PPS if your installing numbers of Macs in an educational setting you really have to look at Apple Remote Desktop its a one stop shop for all your Mac administration needs.
Mac OS X includes a feature called Apple System Restore. You can access it through Disk Utility and use it to create an image of a partition or a whole disk, and replicate that image to another partition or whole disk - even over a network. There's also a command-line version in /usr/sbin/asr. I think Mac OS X Server will even let you NetBoot a system on your network and have it automatically restore its local disk from an ASR image.
I have not done this, but I assume you'd be able to set up a system exactly as you want it to be set up - with both Mac OS X and Windows partitions - and create an ASR image from that, which you can then restore and use at will.
- No need to partition, an action which (to our knowledge) cannot be automated over netboot.
- Both OSes can be included in a single, NetRestore-able disk image.
- No need for end users to reboot to change OSes.
So I strongly suggest you re-examine your decision to use BootCamp, and instead examine Parallels. By switching to Parallels you can use well-established tools such as NetRestore, RadMind, and other off-the-shelf solutions.I also must disagree with one of the other responders who recommended Target disk mode. While this is good for a few computers (and is a great tool for making your source .dmg you'll deploy using the above tools), it does not work well for reimaging hundreds of Macs that are widely distributed across a campus. It requires that each technician be equipped with a firewire drive, which tend to grow legs. Also, more and more security-conscious companies (and colleges) are locking down computers so that neither USB nor Firewire drives can be used and/or forbidding the use of such devices. And then you'll have the problem of keeping each Firewire drive up to date with exactly the same image instead of just updating a single, master .dmg on the server as you can when using NetRestore.
True, it can be tricky to get NetBoot to work across subnets, but we got around that by putting multiple NICs in our NetBoot XServe, one for each subnet. (Yes, we tried Bombich's boot-across-subnets solution but could not get it to work, probably because of how our routers are configured.)
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
The only way to do this is to copy the entire drive, bit for bit. If you clone each partition, you lose out on the wacky Apple GPT/MBR stuff, which means your copy of Windows will die. The guide on NetRestore seems adequate but highlights the complexity. It should be possible to copy a drive image for osx, windows, and then update the GPT and MBR manually to match it, though.
I've done a certain number of these and tried a few solutions, in the end we used Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com) and Winclone (http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/), although you could use ASR with an OS X Server for the Mac part, Winclone is definitely the best solution to image Bootcamp, works very well. You use the diskutil command-line version to partition your drive, then restore the Mac portion using CCC or ASR, then Winclone. It works with FAT or NTFS.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
I typically use a live Linux or BSD CD, and then use 'dd'.
/mnt
/mnt/img_name-
/mnt/img_name-* | bunzip2 | dd of=/dev/ad0
if you have a usb drive mounted to
[replace ad0 with hda if using Linux, or the appropriate device if neither]
create image
netcat
image storage: netcat -l -p PORT_NUMBER_HERE | split -b 1073741024 - img_name-
image source: dd if=/dev/ad0 | bzip2 -z -9 | netcat STORAGE_MACHINE_IP PORT_NUMBER_HERE
local USB HD
dd if=/dev/ad0 | bzip2 -z -9 | split -b 1073741024 -
Restoration involves:
netcat
destination machine: netcat -l -p PORT_NUMBER_HERE | dd of=/dev/ad0
image storage: cat img_name-* | bunzip2 | netcat TARGET_IP PORTNUMBER
usb drive:
cat
Of course, this has the problem that it requires typing out a couple of commands and it does not autoconfigure your machines (so you have to go in and manually make any needed changes), but it's a fairly inexpensive process.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Setting up a dual boot Mac OS X/Windows XP environment on an out-of-the-box Mac
/Applications/Utilities. Skip 'Burn a Mac Drivers CD.' Split HD equally. Insert WinXP CD when prompted. Start install.
Requirements:
Mac OS X Install DVD, or a bootable FireWire/USB drive
BartPE CD with Ghost
Windows XP SP2 CD
Intel Mac (with all firmware updates applied)
Once you've created your master Mac/PC images (using Ghost on the PC and Disk Utility/Apple Software Restore on the Mac), here's how they're deployed.
1. Either boot from Mac OS X Install DVD or a FireWire/USB HD. Launch Disk Utility, restore HD with your Mac image.
2. Boot off your Mac image on internal HD. Launch Boot Camp, which you installed on your Mac image during creation, in
3. The machine will boot the WinXP CD and begin setup. All we need to do from this CD is to format the partition created in Step 2. Format the Windows partition NTFS (Quick).
3a. Do not delete this partition, just format it. if you delete it, your XP restore will be unbootable. (everything is sandboxed from the HFS+
side, so no worries about your Mac side).
3b. Although it may be tempting, don't skip this step - attempts to partition for Boot Camp, then simply Ghost out XP image result in an unbootable XP environment. The NTFS formatting from the XP CD is necessary for successful deployment.
4. Once format is complete, and 'scanning C drive...' begins, shut down machine manually with the power button.
5. Restart the Mac, eject the WinXP CD by holding down the left-click button at startup, hold down the Option key and boot Mac OS X from internal HD. Boot from BartPE CD and Ghost out your WinXP image from FireWire. Reboot into Windows.
6. Finished. Run whatever post-restore actions you have (NewSID, DeepFreeze, etc...) You already installed the Mac-specific drivers for XP during image creation.
I work in a K-12 Education district (primarily apples) and we have noticed a few quirks if you have been using non-intel apples and are changing to intel apples.
To start, you want to create a GUID Partition Table on your external drive. This will allow the drive to boot from an intel mac. The older "Apple Partition Map" will not boot from an Intel, so this is the foundation step.
Once you've got that ready, you will want to use Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich to make your image(s) onto your external drive. I would second the earlier discussed notion of using parallels as it has worked well for both our tech savvy, and not so tech savvy employees. (Read: Parallels doesn't require a computer degree to use)
Install as small a copy of OSX as possible onto the external drive. This will allow you to boot from the external drive, run Carbon Copy Cloner or NetRestore (whichever poison suits you best) and then deploy the image(s). Having OSX bootable from the external drive will also enable you to make any partition changes you need on the mac's hard disk.
Standard imaging practices apply, run your updates, install any software you intend to have on every machine, and repair permissions on the disk before making your final image. Rum is optional, but highly recommended, as it can make the time spent waiting for the image to complete fly by.
-
Why is the rum gone?
From one of my collegues at work in charge of his own dept at our university.
"Yes.
The key is that bootcamp doesn't make the partition "active".
So we have a CD that boots into DOS to run fdisk to activate the partition.
Then it's golden."
Another issue
" I was having problems getting my Ghosted XP load onto my new mini (I could Ghost to the bootcamp-created partition, I could use my 'fdisk' DOS CD to make the partition active, but the damn partition won't show up in an "option" startup "
"So, I grabbed "rEFIt": http://refit.sourceforge.net/"
"Installed this -- was able to "fix" my Windows installation -- then remove it and Windows shows up in the EFI boot options now."
It seems like a pretty cool EFI replacement -- you can use it to set up a "triple-boot" system.