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chake · Mar 29, 2007, 08:22 AM

Here is what we are looking to do. We are a school district running in a primarily windows environment . We do have about 200 mac books, is there imaging software that will run our windows servers that will allow use to clone images to the macs. Example would be a student screws up the laptop and we boot from cd or boot to the network and reimage the machine. We dont want to have to buy a product for the macs and windows

OreoCookie · Mar 29, 2007, 08:27 AM

You can make disk images with OS X built-in utilities (Disk Utility located in /Applications/Utilities). Once you have configured the OS X installation the way you want it to be, make a disk image.

Then you can restore this disk image by booting this machine with the installation DVD and launch Disk Utility from there.

chake · Mar 29, 2007, 09:48 AM

then i would have an image on the laptop. All the laptops are configured the same. Could i make the image and store it on a windows server, then boot to the network, connect to the share, and use the univeral image we have for the laptops?

Thanks

OreoCookie · Mar 29, 2007, 10:14 AM

No, you wouldn't have the image on your laptop, you would have an image of the laptop's harddrive (once you've configured the `template').
The image you've created is just a file that you can save anywhere you'd like (e. g. on a server or better, on an external harddrive). If you make an image of a device, you cannot store the image on the same device.

I'd get an external harddrive for the job as the transfer rates will be much, much better than anything you can get via network. And it's much less hassle. (You could partition this external harddrive so you can even boot from it, for instance.)

chake · Mar 29, 2007, 10:46 AM

Great that sounds like a plan, do you know of anyplace i can read up on it and kinda present it to the boss.

Thanks

OreoCookie · Mar 29, 2007, 10:58 AM

Yes, in Disk Utility's help: there's a section on creating images to restore volumes. It's relatively easy and straight-forward.

However, there's also other cloning software out there, but I think for your intent's and purposes OS X' built-in capabilities will suffice. Again, I would really get an external harddrive for this. If you get a sufficiently large drive, you could also save different configurations (e. g. newer versions of your template that include newer updates or different templates for different purposes).

chake · Mar 29, 2007, 12:39 PM

ok i assume i just boot to the osx cd and then run disk utility from there. to create an image of the drive?

OreoCookie · Mar 29, 2007, 01:03 PM

No, you don't need to boot from CD to create a disk image. But (for obvious reasons) you need to boot either from CD or an external harddrive to write the disk image onto the MacBook's internal harddrive.

Hence my suggestion to install OS X onto an external harddrive (I stronlgy recommend FireWire drive which is faster than USB2 drives and only marginally more expensive) so you can boot from it, launch Disk Utility and then restore from that harddrive. (As you can imagine, booting from an external harddrive is much faster than booting from DVD.)

chake · Mar 29, 2007, 01:22 PM

Oreo, you are a huge help, and i want to thank you.

Right now my only option is to save the image to a network share.

i boot into the OS on the hard drive open disk utility, go to create the new image and i get the error device is busy, i assume that is because i am boot up on the hard drive

While the machine is booting, i hold the n key down to do network boot, i get the flashing globe then the apple.... then it boots back into the OS on the hard drive.

Doing some reading on netboot i came across information leading me to believe that i need to have an OSx Server to hand out the BSDP stuff unless i canfigure our windows server to do it. is this why netboot didnt work for me?

here is what i was reading

After the chime, the machine firmware loads, reads the boot settings, and in the case of Netboot, starts a DHCP and BSDP (boot service discovery protocol) discovery process. Its important to draw a distinction between the two. The two protocols are very similar in behavior and can both be administered by the bootpd process on Mac OS X Server. It is not necessary, however, for a client to get both DHCP and BSDP information from one server, nor is it necessary that they even come from a Mac OS X server (although configuring another OS to hand out Mac-specific BSDP information is not an easy task -- that is the value of Mac OS X Server).

Thanks Again

mfbernstein · Mar 29, 2007, 05:09 PM

I've never seen a Windows machine work as a netboot server. You're really going to want to use a Mac to do this (it can be done with Linux, however). You don't necessarily need OS X server on the Mac server, although, again, it will make make it easier.

OreoCookie · Mar 29, 2007, 05:17 PM

No, you don't want to boot via network here nor do you want a Netboot server. That's only a useful feature if your clients always have access to your local network. Since you've mentioned the computers are Macbooks, this isn't the case. Netboot is only useful if you are administrating desktop machines in your local network.

Also, you can use a second Mac as an external harddrive (which is faster than a network share). If you are unable to create the image, then boot from the installation DVD and during the first few steps of the installation process, you'll be able to launch Disk Utility via the menu on the top. The external harddrive/second Mac in target disk mode (restart the Mac and press T; connect the two Macs with a FireWire cable) will show up as volumes in Disk Utility. Save the template on the second Mac's harddrive.