[Laurence]

Ok, this may be a bit long...

At work, we have about 100 Macs (G4s & G5s) of varying configurations and one Xserve. There are also around 100 PCs in our department. All these machines are on one of two subnets (192.168.186.x and 192.168.187.x) and all IPs are assigned by a DHCP server in the IT department.

I am trying to figure out a way to deploy a disk image to the Macs when a new employee joins or something goes wrong with one of the computers. I made a master install with all our software installed and used CCC to make an image. I did check the box for "prepare for ASR". I made a 10.2.8 image and a 10.3.1 image and just for fun, made a netboot image as well. So now I have a few disk images that I placed on the XServe. They are shared through AFP and also through HTTP.

I connected a spare mac to mine and booted it to target disc mode. I issued the following command from my computer in the terminal...

sudo asr -source /Users/me/Desktop/10.2.8.user.dmg -target /Volumes/Mac\ HD/ -erase

and after a few minutes I had a bootable mac... everything worked great... now for the problem...

I tried booting another mac off the 10.3 install CD and tried to do a network restore and I get errors every time. I put in http://<XSERVE's IP ADDRESS>/image.dmg as the source and the intermal HD's single partition as the destination. I click on restore and after some amount of preparing I get an error with a long number... The number is different each time. I checked the server logs and it doesn't even show an attempt at access.

I can download the image using the same URL from Safari or even from the windows machines on the network.

I think what I need is a bootable OS X CD that boots me to the terminal with network access and then I could just do the ASR from the command line, but am not sure how to do that.

If there is an easier way to do this, I'm willing to accept any advice.

I can't get a firewire HD (due to security issue at work), and I don't want to have to carry a mac around to do the restores manually every time. Net boot is a possiblity, although I would rather not as the XServe is used for other tasks we really can't afford the network bandwidth. Once I get this working, I will place the disc images on one of the NT servers in the IT department so long term storage is not an issue. I just would like to get this working so that the IT department doesn't have to be involved any more than absolutely necessary. I have read most of the information on the CCC web site and know that this will involve some more testing, but need any advice available.

Thanks,

[si_lance]

I don't have an answer for you, but I'd just like to give you kudos for using so many Macs for work.

[TimmyDee51]

What I would recommend (and this is a pie-in-the-sky ideal sort of thing) is getting an Xserve and running NetRestore from Mike Bombich. The Xserve comes with a dual-port ethernet card. Hook one up to one subnet and the other up to the second. Then use NetRestore Helper (comes with NetRestore) to create a network restore image. When NetBoot is selected, it will boot from the Xserve and automatically bring up NetRestore. At this point, you will have already created a few NetRestore sets based on your needs. Select the one you want and watch it go to work.

If that doesn't work, try making an OS X bootable CD that includes NetRestore. You can use HTTP with it as well.

Check out www.bombich.com as Mike has some great software in addition to CCC and some good documentation.