Posts Tagged build disc
Sysprep for Mac OS X
I admit it, for the last fifteen years or so I’ve been almost exclusively Windows-centric. I’m sure there’s a Mac-specific term for this but I haven’t found it yet. So, I’ll use sysprep for now.
What do I mean? In Windows there’s a set of tools available that lets you build a reference computer with all the latest updates, pre-installed drivers and software and your own configurations. Then you strip out all the bits that make it a unique computer such as user profiles and their associated passwords, unique computer identifiers and so on. At the end of this you have a reference install of Windows that you can take an image of and deploy to other computers. The first time you boot on a new computer it goes through some basic setup stuff and away you go.
Because I run a computer business that sells (and services) Apple computers I’ve been looking for a way to achieve the same sort of thing. What follows in this article is the results of a some in-depth research and putting together bits and pieces from various sources.
My result is a disk image (.dmg) file that I can use to restore on any current version of Mac hardware (laptop and desktop – although untested on a Mac Pro) that will have a user environment I’ve already configured and with additional software that I’d like available. It hasn’t got any pre-existing users created but runs the standard Apple welcome/setup process when first booted up instead – that way you get to create a new user profile for the new owner of the computer. Read the rest of this entry »
Snow Leopard – Five Nice New Finds
It’s almost a month since the release of Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest release of it’s Mac OS X operating system. Allowing for shipping, I didn’t get my copy until a few days later. Not wanting to tempt fate, I waited for the weekend when I had a chance to do a full image backup as well as my normal Time Machine hourly backups.
The actual upgrade went off fine. I upgraded over the top of my current install and didn’t see any “deal breaker” problems resulting.
There’s already a significant tonnage of stuff about Snow Leopard so I’m not going to go into general reviews or benchmarks. I’d expect my experience to be much the same as already reported anyway. Instead, I wanted to touch on five small, new, features that I really like.
The Build Disc – Part 5b (Extras – Office 2003)
Posted by David in Build Disc, Unattended Installs on April 8th, 2009
A fully standardised install only takes us so far. At some point you have to cater to the stuff that doesn’t fit in with the standardised stuff. This article is about the extra bits that help Office 2003.
What do I install? Pretty much just the file format converters to allow Office 2003 to read files created with Office 2007.
(As an aside, the Office viewers normally only open Office 2003 files but if you install them and then install the converter, they will also read Office 2007 files.)
I’ve worked out an unattended install but for only one install it’s not really all that relevant.
For what it’s worth, this is the unattended install command:
Office2003-FileFormatConverters.exe /quiet /passive /norestart
This article is part of a series dealing with my standard system build. It starts with this article and the post you’re reading now is directly related to this one.
The Build Disc – Part 5a (Extras)
Posted by David in Build Disc on April 7th, 2009
A standard install is all very well but you reach a point, at least at the home user/small business level, where standardization falls down. Not every computer is going to have the same version of MS Office installed (or even have Office), some computers will not already have Acrobat Reader (or have an older version pre-installed).
Having already dealt with service packs, Windows/Microsoft Updates and standard utilities, now it’s time to come up with a good way of handling these extra items. I’ve set this up with our typical customers in mind and it handles the stuff we usually need. Obviously once you get to this level there is almost infinite scope for how you might handle things.
The Build Disc – Part 4b (wrap-up)
Posted by David in Build Disc, Unattended Installs on April 6th, 2009
Over the past week or so I’ve posted separate articles on each of the standard utilities that comprise the unattended installs portion of my standard build disc. Now I’m going to build on the starting point of unattended installs and talk about how to implement these installs as a component of the overall standard build.
The benefit of using unattended installs is that all of these tools get installed with no interaction required on my part. Just set it going and come back when its done. How did I do this? Largely be combining each silent install into a single batch file that does the whole install process.
Unfortunately, it’s not just a matter of doing a cut and paste on each item. In order to do this properly I need to work out which operating system I’m dealing with. For example, there’s no point trying to install Sidebar Gadgets under Windows XP.