cloning macs

[tbowat]

New year, new organization!!

We have 3 different varieties of macs; Power mac G5 10.4.11 , Mac Pro (Intel) 10.6.6, iMac 10.6.6. The thought is to take 1 of each variety and make a master. (is this called a ghost or clone?) The master would include all parental controls and software. We are using AD credentials to connect to the server, and some of our software is standalone and some of it is server licensing. After the master is made it would be put onto the other macs and everyone's mac would be exactly the same, thus everyone would live in happy land!! We have tried it before and ended up with licensing and system corruption issues. I am not sure of the software that was used in the past. I have only made a backup for my home computer, so this is a little different for me. If anyone has any helpful ideas it would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Joe]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner for this. It's free.

 

[maxon]

Not feasible. PPC G5 platforms are quite different to Intel machines, you'll never be able to create a 'master' image able to run all your software across the entire mac range.

 

[prepressguru]

Not really possible unless all your hardware is exactly the same and you would need some sort of site license for your applications. The other benefit would come from using Mac OS X server. It would host your image file which you macs would then boot from the same image, not their internal hardrive.

I use superdupper for backing up a completed system.

p

 

[mattbeals]

If you make a master of each type; G5, Intel iMac and Intel Mac Pro as the OP said they were planning then it will work. Making a disc image will work using Apple's utility or you could clone the "master computer" onto an external drive for each hardware configuration. Then to image the individual workstations you could boot off the external drive.

You could probably do a netboot. You might even be able to use the install DVD's to grab the master image from a server. I haven't tried either of those in a very long time.

 

[Joe]

Not feasible. PPC G5 platforms are quite different to Intel machines, you'll never be able to create a 'master' image able to run all your software across the entire mac range.

I'm pretty sure he meant to create an image of each kind and not one master image to run all of them....which I agree, won't work.

 

[ps78]

If you have a mac server with netboot capabilities then have a look at deploystudio (www.deploystudio.com). Its a fantastic bit of software which allows you to do much more than just image a client. For example, you can set the workflow to automatically partition a drive, set the hostname and bind to AD/OD, deploy packages etc, etc.

Edit: If you don't have a mac server then you can create a bootable volume on a USB stick (I forgot about that!)

 

[Hopkins Printing]

Sounds like you're on the right track. I use Apple's Disk Utility for the cloning I do. I setup the "master" on an external FireWire drive and then clone to the Mac's as needed. In between re-clones, I just update the master and my machines manually with OS updates, software point releases, and other configuration changes.

In your case, you would indeed build masters for each type of Mac you have. Save the master as a drive image somewhere and then re-clone as necessary.

Cheers,
Jon Morgan
Hopkins Printing

 

[[email protected]]

10.5.8 PPC/10.6.6 Intel

10.5.8 PPC/10.6.6 Intel

You need to make a master image of your best PPC machine with 10.5.8 installed and a separate image of your best Intel machine with 10.6.6 installed and all your software up to date the way you need it. I am assuming you have licensing which allows multiple installations of the software or a license manager component since individually licensed apps usually won't work when re-deployed. I use DeployStudio on an external HD that will boot that generation of computer. CarbonCopy Cloner will also work, but you'll have more post restore setup to do.

You will probably need two external boot drives with your choice of deploy tools, one for PPC, one for Intel. 10.5.8 is the last OS that will run on PPC. PPC machines require the boot drive to be formatted Apple Partition Map, Intel can use GUID.

The basics for using CarbonCopy Cloner are here:

Restoring from a disk image / Backing Up to Disk Images or Other Macs on Your Network / FAQs - Bombich Software Support

DeployStudio is full of automation, but requires more front end work and a lot more knowledge of imaging processes to do well. Very good for big deployments.

 

[kyle]

I start out by creating a small partition at the "end" of the hard drive (where access times are usually slightly faster unless you have solid-state drives). 64 GB is more than plenty for 4 versions of the complete CS Standard suite (e.g., CS2-CS5), Quark, Freehand, etc. I leave the rest as an empty formatted partition for local storage to use when necessary or convenient. If you deselect foreign language support and printer drivers in the OS install, you save a fair amount of space.

After carefully setting up the system, I use iDefrag to defragment (minor improvement but very inexpensive and well-made software). Then I put the hard drive in my Linux file server and just copy the partition to a file. You can also use an OpenSUSE live CD (free download) to copy the system partition as a file to the scratch partition on the same disk if you are comfortable with a Unix command line. This doesn't protect against hard drive failure, but keeping a copy there allows for more convenient restoration without removing the drive. Since the system partition is small, I can restore (and image) in less than 30 minutes from another drive, and less than an hour from the same drive with a live CD. This method allows you to easily restore the system to a clean state on a weekly basis if you wish.

Activated Adobe volume licensed software can move to other machines from the same image without issue, and I think regular licenses can also, but you have to reactivate with another serial number. In my experience, OS X is very robust in adapting to different hardware when you start up a machine with a hard drive image created on another one. It seems to find the appropriate kext files and doesn't even complain. You certainly wouldn't be able to cross the PowerPC/Intel barrier with the same image, however.