[Proposed Tech Guide - Please Comment] Guide To Faster OS Installation

[lucasbytegenius]

Oh man, I've been looking for a program like nLite for months now...I think this is going to take a few weeks now, I have to get comfortable enough with these new programs, and I'm a bit busy with school. Thanks tlarkin!

 

[ErikAlbert]

I played with nLite/vLite myself long ago.
If I remember well, nLite was able to create a WinXP Pro Installation CD, that installed the folder "Documents and Settings", which contains all your data, on another harddisk, for instance disk-D.
That was the most interesting feature of nLite/vLite to me.

Streamlining winXP Pro was not an option for me, too dangerous IMO, you don't do that with an OS, you might get an instable OS this way, if you don't know what you are doing.

 

[lucasbytegenius]

I know pretty much what I'm doing as I've used the XP deployment util on the CD a lot because I needed something special for a set of computers. This utility just makes it a whole lot easier, though I do think the cmd line is rather fun to use

 

[tlarkin]

...Streamlining winXP Pro was not an option for me, too dangerous IMO, you don't do that with an OS, you might get an instable OS this way, if you don't know what you are doing.

Gonna ask for a citation on this one. All the slipstreaming does is combine updates into one installer. It doesn't hack anything or change anything under the hood.

 

[StrangleHold]

nLite is completely clean, used it many times.

 

[lucasbytegenius]

Been having some trouble getting InstaDMG working. Gives me an "*****.dmg could not be mounted" or something like that. I'm going to try it on Leopard (once I get it installed ) and see how that goes.

 

[tlarkin]

Been having some trouble getting InstaDMG working. Gives me an "*****.dmg could not be mounted" or something like that. I'm going to try it on Leopard (once I get it installed ) and see how that goes.

It usually installs a folder in the root of your home directory.

 

[lucasbytegenius]

I don't understand-installs a folder.....? I unzipped the archive, and put the Leopard DMG in the BaseOS folder, then ran the the bash file as root.

 

[tlarkin]

you can import an OS image directly from the installer DVD to make it "pristine," in the sense that it will act like a clean retail DVD install you do yourself from the disk.

There are some python scripts located here:

bash-3.2# pwd
/Users/tlarkin/instadmg/AddOns/InstaUp2Date
bash-3.2# ls
.svn				checksum.pyc
CatalogFiles			importDisk.py
InstaUp2Date Instructions.rtf	instaUp2Date.py
checksum.py
bash-3.2#

See the attached screen shots as well. Now, if you have a retail DVD of OS X in your optical drive, and from the command line go into /Users/tlarkin/instadmg/AddOns/InstaUp2Date and run the command:

sudo ./importDisk.py

It will run a python script that will auto-magically create an exact image from the installer DVD. Then after it is done, you can from the same directory run:

sudo ./instaUp2Date.py

This will take that OS image you just made, and auto-magically download and install all Apple OS updates into that image file. So, lets say you toss in a 10.5.4 disk for argument's sake. You run the first script and it creates an image file of that disk. The second script will download every update from Apple for 10.5 and splice it into the image file, thus creating an up-to-date 10.5.8 image which you can now install via block copying on your Macs. This makes it easy to always maintain an up-to-date installer, and thus does not make you have to ever download software updates through the OS.

The only caveat is that it will not apply firmware updates because the nature of those updates require some sort of user interaction.

 

[lucasbytegenius]

Ok, I will try that. If that doesn't work, I'll try using the hdiutil command to create an image.

 

[tlarkin]

Ok, I will try that. If that doesn't work, I'll try using the hdiutil command to create an image.

No need to reinvent the wheel, the python scripts do all of that for you

 

[lucasbytegenius]

Ahh, ok a bit new to the *nix terminal here, just know enough to get around.

 

[tlarkin]

Ahh, ok a bit new to the *nix terminal here, just know enough to get around.

Once you get the image process done, look at the asr command. You can use it to restore images to drives, and it does a block copy, ie it is fast.

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/asr.8.html

 

[lucasbytegenius]

Am I right to assume that the manual for that command is built into the Mac OS? Like if I type "asr -?" ? Apple's site is reeeaaaallly slow on this end.

 

[tlarkin]

Am I right to assume that the manual for that command is built into the Mac OS? Like if I type "asr -?" ? Apple's site is reeeaaaallly slow on this end.

open up terminal and type man asr and it will give you the manual page, however the website will have the newest version of the manual page so I always go to the site when possible.

 

[lucasbytegenius]

Ok, I found an alternative to WinToFlash and have had immense success with putting 7 on a USB drive. It's called bootsect, and it makes the bootsector that points to the bootmanager. It was intended for repairing startup errors, but it works well for both bit widths of 7. I couldn't get it to work for XP though. What I did with 7 was simply copy the setup files from the DVD onto my flash drive, then run the bootsect program with the switch /nt60, targeted at my FD letter. But copying the XP setup files from the CD and running bootsect with the switch /nt52 didn't work. Any suggestions for something to use? I'm thinking about putting MSDOS boot files onto the drive and then modifying autoexec.bat, but there could be complications with drive letters. Any ideas?