Sheridan Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 Has anyone found a reliable way to clone dual boot Macs? We've got some iMacs with 10.6.8 and we've setup Bootcamp with Win7, which works fine. I would like to clone this across others but all of the solutions I've tried fail in one way or another (Carbon copy,winclone,Disk utility etc) It doesn't have to be a free product - just something that will successfully image a mac with the two partitions?
Tricky_Dicky Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 Deploy Studio. You will need a mac server to do it, but it's fantastic. 1
pantscat Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 ^ What he said... Well worth spending a little bit of money on a Mac Mini server just for this. I did. It saved me hours. Plus it looks quite nice in my comms room.
HodgeHi Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 If you're not extending the Schema of your AD or using another piece of software such as AdmitMac or Centrify to manage your macs then you will more than likely need a Mac server anyway to lock them down. This is the common reason for a Mac Server and occasionally the only reason one is purchased. Being able to use it to deploy images is a bonus. Also Deploy Studio can image standard PCs as well so it could be your all-in-one solution. Not sure of its support for pre-staing and scripting though.
Sheridan Posted September 23, 2011 Author Posted September 23, 2011 Yes we have a mac server, a full fat xserver! Never tried deploy studio though, will that cope with the Windows 7 partition?
HodgeHi Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 Yes it will. I have just deployed Windows 7 Pro with OS X 10.6.8 to some new Macbook Pros. Worked absolutely fine. Remember to download the latest version of Deploy Studio though and also update the .NBI file with the latest version of Deploy Studio.
Sheridan Posted September 23, 2011 Author Posted September 23, 2011 (edited) Sounds ideal, I've just downloaded it - now looking for some basic instructions to get me started! Edit: If anyone is just starting with this I found this very good for getting going: http://adamac.org/deploystudio-101 Edited September 23, 2011 by Sheridan
SC92 Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 This should help you along the way. deploystudio 1
Tricky_Dicky Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 Yes it will. I have just deployed Windows 7 Pro with OS X 10.6.8 to some new Macbook Pros. Worked absolutely fine. Remember to download the latest version of Deploy Studio though and also update the .NBI file with the latest version of Deploy Studio. What's in the new version? When you do the upgrade, will it keep all the scripts/workflows you already have?
Sheridan Posted September 23, 2011 Author Posted September 23, 2011 (edited) Ahh it was all looking so promising! I set up DS on the server, created the boot image on the relevant iMac and copied it over to the server. Setup an AFP share on a NAS box for the repository.All good but every time I netboot the mac it goes into the panic: "NFS Server Refused mount" Can't even get the mac to boot up from the image I created-Tried created the boot image a few times but no go. Edit: I've removed and reconfigured NFS and Netboot on the server and get the same error every time. I guess DeployStudio isn't even the problem here. Looks like our macs will remain single boot - I found very little info about the above error on the web Edited September 23, 2011 by Sheridan
HodgeHi Posted September 23, 2011 Posted September 23, 2011 One thing to try is to restart the NetBoot service and also untick the shares in the NetBoot settings and then re-tick them to force the NFS share permissions to be set correctly. Also try restarting the NFS service on the Xserve. You may need to drop down to the command prompt to do this... sudo serveradmin -list I think to see the services that you can manage. Also if you hard reset a machine while it is net booted from deploy studio this can sometimes crash the NFS service. 1
Sheridan Posted September 23, 2011 Author Posted September 23, 2011 I think I'm getting somewhere. Removed the NFS and Netboot services from the server and then rebooted. Reinstalled them and reconfigured them the same way as they were before and my Mac is now netbooting correctly! I've left it copying the image - lets see if it works!
Sheridan Posted September 28, 2011 Author Posted September 28, 2011 Ok. Copied the master image (OSX and bootcamp Windows7) and then restored it back to the Imac. Now I only have the Mac partition and the Windows one has disappeared. I thought Deploy Studio was 'aware' of Windows and dual boot systems? It seems to have cloned the disk but not restored the partitions correctly?
Tricky_Dicky Posted September 28, 2011 Posted September 28, 2011 When you copied the images, you did run the deploystudio capture twice didn't you? So once to capture the MacOSx drive and another to Capture the Windows 7 side? What happens is that it will create a separate disk image for each one which you then restore using a separate task sequence.
Sheridan Posted September 28, 2011 Author Posted September 28, 2011 Ah that would explain it. I thought the 'disk image' capture was capturing the whole disk, like ghost does.Judging by the log entries appearing on the screen it was capturing the Windows partition but not the way I was expecting. I'll try running it again for both OS's. If I capture both, then run a restore (twice) will it be aware of the bootcamp partition?
Tricky_Dicky Posted September 28, 2011 Posted September 28, 2011 You won't need to restore the partitions seperatly, you create a workflow in Deploy Studio Admin that does both in one go. My workflow at the moment is as follows: Partition Disk; Restore Mac image; Rename;Bind to AD; Bind to OD;Restore Windows Image. Good luck 1
Sheridan Posted September 30, 2011 Author Posted September 30, 2011 Brilliant stuff - cloned two disk images seperately and created a workflow to partition the disk and then drop the two images back on. Worked a treat. Another thumbs up from me for DeployStudio! Cheers for the info on this everyone.
Tricky_Dicky Posted September 30, 2011 Posted September 30, 2011 Brilliant stuff - cloned two disk images seperately and created a workflow to partition the disk and then drop the two images back on. Worked a treat. Another thumbs up from me for DeployStudio! Cheers for the info on this everyone. Glad it worked. Does your Windows 7 work ok? I've been trying to capture and deploy it for a few days now and can not get it working properlly. When I sysprep it and capture it, Windows kindly removes Bootcamp and forgets how the keyboard works and then trys to log me in with a local Administrator account. Seems very odd.
Sheridan Posted September 30, 2011 Author Posted September 30, 2011 Yes the Windows 7 one seems to be fine - I'm just setting it up now again (with all the applications needed) for a 'proper' version. The windows 7 partition seems to work the same as if it has been sysprep'd and restarted which is what I'd expect.
SC92 Posted September 30, 2011 Posted September 30, 2011 I've also bootcamped our imacs and created two different partitions from which to choose from. If you like, here's a link to some software to include in your mac osx image which allows users to pick which partition to boot from on startup. Very handy in our school so far. rEFIt - An EFI Boot Menu and Toolkit I've also noticed that our Windows partition is extremely slow sometimes to log people in etc, don't suppose anyone knows why?! May be a long shot but worth a go. 1
HodgeHi Posted September 30, 2011 Posted September 30, 2011 Just A FYI, you can also image two partitions using a single workflow. Just add the 2 partitions to the workflow, so once it has captured one it will start the next one.
Sheridan Posted October 3, 2011 Author Posted October 3, 2011 Just used that rEFIt on a test mac - works brilliantly and very handy being able to configure the boot menu!
SC92 Posted October 3, 2011 Posted October 3, 2011 Glad you found it useful Sheridan, I couldn't believe myself how simple it was to set up judging by what it does. By the way if you wanted to remove the EFI Shell and the unnecessary things from the boot options just delete the 'Tools' folder in the 'efi' folder on your HDD and voila. I found the shell and the rest of the clutter completely useless and just an excuse for some users who didn't want to work.
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