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Massively Updating to Mac OS X? 60
Zerocool3001 asks: "I work for a school in California that uses all Macintoshes. All of the machines have Mac OS 9 on them. We would like to upgrade to Ma OS X 10.2 and we have a net install server with disk images ready to install. However, it appears as though net installations of disk images is not possible in Mac OS 9. If you have any way to install a disk image over a large network to about 500-700 computers, we could definitely use the suggestions."
Assimilate (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Assimilate (Score:5, Informative)
this works like a charm (Score:3, Informative)
man -t asr
(this will print the man page to your default printer)
2. read this manpage (then read it again
3. setup a system in the way you want it to be cast, OS9, OSX and all your applications then make a disk image of it. (see the man page)
4. boot to OSX via, NetBoot, or an external firewire drive.
5. Cast this image either via http or local file system.
#local filesystem method, pretty fast over firewire
asr -source Library.dmg -ta
Re:Assimilate (Score:5, Informative)
--Paul
Re:Assimilate (Score:2)
Re:Assimilate (Score:4, Informative)
Another good resource is Mac OS X Labs [macosxlabs.org]. Full of good information about this sort of stuff.
YMMV. Good luck.
Drink from the well . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that for these kinds of numbers, in a high-profile installation... -someone- over at Apple would be interested in making things go smoothly for you.
I'd imagine that you could get help directly from Apple - and probably better than anything you'll find here.
Re:Drink from the well . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
Youre assuming they paid for those licenses
--
Website Templates for Dreamweaver [dynamicexpression.com]
Re:Drink from the well . . . (Score:1)
-Alex
Re:Drink from the well . . . (Score:2)
-Alex
Re:Drink from the well . . . (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt it's fair to just jump to the conclusion that they're using illegal installations... if you search around, you'll find that getting "official" advice or help from Apple can be pretty difficult at times. IE, even the maine laptop deal (one of the biggest educational deals in Apple's history and made a big splash) had those who were working on the project who called Apple's tech support and service for rolling everything out "inadequate".
I know I used to volunteer at a high school awhile back and it was pretty rough sometimes getting basic help from Apple... they don't have that big of a "services" team either for enterprise or educational customers. In the PC world these gaps are often filled via VAR's (value added resellers) but Apple has cut a lot of them out.
Re:Drink from the well . . . (Score:1)
I've worked with Apple Ed in Public and Private K-12s and they've always been very helpful.
Find the local area Apple people and ask.
Re:Drink from the well . . . (Score:1)
Talk to apple (Score:1, Informative)
Apple came and helped us out with planning. Yes we were buying about 100 new macs but they stills helped us out over several days for free. Talk to your apple rep. Apple corp employ many education specialists just for this sort of thing.
Netboot (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you might want to invest in gigabit ethernet and some switches at the same time. Other than that, you'd have to around to each machine individually with the OS X CD.
Re:Netboot (Score:2)
Re:Netboot (Score:3, Informative)
With NetBoot and OS X Server 10.2 all the clients start from a single disk image. (references [apple.com])
ASR (Score:5, Informative)
Apple NetBoot on OS X Server (Score:5, Informative)
Aside from that, from what I remember, you can do some openfirmware stuff where openfirmware will allow you to remotely boot off of a disk. This way, you could automate most of your install. The problem with all of this of course is the hardware you're using - automating this all means lots of scripting to figure out which drive, save, etc.
Regardless of any of the above, contacting Apple for a more direct contract on the install might be your best bet. Course, if you're cheap, you can always hire some students (i.e. get 3 hours of semester credit or whatever) to help do updates.
Re:Apple NetBoot on OS X Server (Score:2)
CFEngine, or maybe remote (shared) drive (Score:2, Interesting)
Staying with pure Apple methods, you might be able to add a network drive to each computer's environment, than remotely modify/replace the
I could be wrong about this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I could be wrong about this (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I could be wrong about this (Score:2)
Re:I could be wrong about this (Score:2, Informative)
NetInstall has nothing to do with the OS (Score:5, Informative)
The hardware you are running on makes a difference, though. It's best if you've got a B&W G3 or slot-loading imac (or better). These machines support "dynamic" netbooting... they also added the nice feature of just booting the machine by holding the "N" key.
If you have older machines, then you have to be proviging IP Addresses (via DHCP) from the server that's doing the Netboot/Netinstalling.
Firewalls can also come into play here. You have to have the appropriate port for NFS, TFTP, and Bootp open in order to Netboot/Netinstall OS X.
I hope this helped...
NetBoot Possible From OS 9 (Score:5, Informative)
Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Go here and get NetRestore:
http://www.bombich.com/software/netr
Go here and download the video, NetRestore in Depth:
http://macosxlabs.org/webcasts/index.html
The only thing I can add is that your clients need to be ugraded to OS 9.2.2 to netboot.
With Netboot and NetInstall, coupled with Network Home Directories, I figure I can cut my time spent doing tech work in half. (I'm being optimistic, but still...)
Mac OS X Labs (Score:5, Informative)
From their site:
I personally use ASR to deploy systems. Setup a base image and roll 'em. More info at http://www.bombich.com/mactips/index.html [bombich.com]Re:Mac OS X Labs (Score:1)
http://afp548.com [afp548.com].
Lots of great articles/software.
I especially like their ipsec articles and software (flying raccoon articles, vaporsec)
Definately contact Apple. (Score:5, Informative)
Try calling the Educational Support # at 1-800-800-2775 (APPL). Usually there are individual K-12 reps for each area or school. See if the folks at Educational Support can get you in contact with that person. Honestly, with this kind of volume, they could probably make it much easier for you, both logistically and financially, if you get what I mean.
Also, might I suggest as a resource:
http://www.apple.com/education/k12/
It is soooo Easy (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite "500 to 700" (Score:2, Offtopic)
Apple Remote Desktop (Score:2, Informative)
Ask Apple directly on Tuesday (Score:5, Informative)
It's a terrible idea, but.... (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, there are soooo many things that could go wrong....
=)
They'll have those rootkits installed faster... (Score:1, Funny)
Mother of all upgrades? (Score:3, Funny)
Man, I wish I could've upgraded my Ma. She was stuck in the 60's.
Are you sure you want to do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are you sure you want to do this? (Score:1)
Re:Are you sure you want to do this? (Score:1)
Re:Are you sure you want to do this? (Score:1)
Command line asr(1) and FireWire drives work good (Score:4, Informative)
Also, if you are putting OS X 10.2 on older machines you probably have to upgrade the firmware first. Someone already has to walk to the location to reboot the machine and probably make sure that a teacher didn't copy their grades to the Hard Drive (that you will be erasing in a minute). Also, once you get the image restored onto the machine, there are a few preferences that are set on a "ByHost" basis - tied to the MAC address of the machine. Things like energy saver settings, and Remore Desktop being enabled. The latter is important if you want to be able to manage your machines later on without walking across the campus.
You should contact Apple and connect with a System Engineer who can work with you to make your deployment a whole lot smoother. Moving over several hundred machines to a new OS is no small task, but a little automation can go a long ways toward making it a manageable process.
hack a Linux rescue CD (Score:2)
If you want to keep it really simple, set up a machine with Mac OS with a single partition of size smaller than any of your disks (say, 5G) and do an install on that. The startup script would do something like:
This copies
Re:hack a Linux rescue CD (Score:2)
If you use the
approach, the partition tables and C/H/S settings will be baked for all drives that aren't identical to your master drive.
I've had no end of grief cloning systems at work when building embedded devices. In the end, building the filesystem on a new device is about the only way that reliably works.
NetRestore for rollout, Radmind for maintenance (Score:3, Informative)
Casper (Score:1, Informative)
Apple Software Restore & Carbon Copy Cloner (Score:3, Insightful)