Dear all,
A question on copying OS X image onto multiple computers:
I run several Power Mac G4 labs in an Art School. The computers, though different in speed and hard drive capacity, are all loaded from a standard image with OS 9.2.1. They have the exact same contents, from fonts to applications (we do have legal licenses), and from control panel settings to the name of hard drives. With OS 9.2.1, it is easy to do so, using ASR to restore the customized image onto the client CPU either via network or firewire drive. However, as more and more OS X native applications are available, still, except QuarkXPress, and the possibility of forgoing Classic is becoming reality. The school has decided to run the computers in OS X in the near future. I have been experimenting with OS X image copy, but had problem with it that is mind bothering.
What I did was starting the process with two hard drives. The first one has two partitions; one is called Work, with which I used to operate the process, the other partition is called Model, on which OS X was installed, and will be used to serve as the model image. The second hard drive is the target. ASR 2.2.4 is what I used to restore an .img image created from Model hard drive to Target.
I have visited bombich.com, and downloaded Mike�s Cloner, but was having problem with it. Basically, I was having permission problem, even after I set the privileges of all hard drives to read & write and ignore privileges in Show Info.
With the use of Norton Utilities 7, I discovered that there are 62 hidden files needed to be removed from the image (they reside in usr, bin, and sbin), in order to allow the Target to be bootable after restoring. However, after the Target hard drive booted up, I discovered that Internet Explorer runs poorly, using the back button may result in endless spinning of the color wheel. What�s worse is that there is no sound on the target hard drive. No sound at all.
I am very proficient with OS 9.x, but OS X and UNIX are strangers to me. If anyone has secret recipe on how to successfully copy image massively, I�d sure like to learn. I was also wondering if Retrospect is an option for this process, and if the rumor about a OS X version of Norton Ghost has any truth in it.
Thanks,
Tinmanfoto
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