dougchase

On the front page: It reads "...all the hep you need." Apple should be capitalized. The sentence that starts "We at How-To-Mac" is a fragment. "Set up" should be two words in this context. Hands-on should be hyphenated. Did you mean "good value for money" instead of "good for value money?" Should read "experienced technicians" instead of "experience technicians." Windows should be capitalized. Your content is really great but the details might need a double-check. I'd be happy to have a look at the rest of the site if you want.

Hello again gents, I tried it again and received the error "An error occurred while resizing the NTFS volume." I'm figuiring this has to do with the size of the disk on which I created the Windows image. What do you think?

Seems like when I have any difficult issue with AD, Xgrid, Podcast Producer, it frequently turns out to be DNS-related.

Thanks so much! That sounds close to what I did, but as you can tell from my log above, it didn't quite behave. I am out of the office today, but I will go through your great instructions tomorrow and figure out what I've done wrong.

Gah, crap. "NetRestore failed to restore the Windows." Maybe I'll post logs. ======= NetRestore (v. 3.4.6): Mon Nov 17 20:20:07 UTC 2008 ======= Source: /tmp/netboot/Resources/Disk Images/mini-osx.dmg Target: /Volumes/Macintosh Target Device: /dev/disk0s2 Arguments: --noprompt --erase Path to NetRestore: /Applications/Utilities/NetRestore.app/ NetBooted: Yes Boot volume OS info: Operating System: 10.5.1 (9B2117) Mach kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 9.1.1: Fri Dec 14 19:00:14 PST 2007; root:xnu-1228.1.30~1/RELEASE_I386 Kernel configured for up to 2 processors. 2 processors are physically available. 2 processors are logically available. Processor type: i486 (Intel 80486) Processors active: 0 1 Primary memory available: 2.00 gigabytes Default processor set: 30 tasks, 110 threads, 2 processors Load average: 0.45, Mach factor: 1.55 Mounted volume information: Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/disk1s9 3773896 3018240 717920 81% / devfs 226 226 0 100% /dev fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev /dev/disk2 934 16 872 2% /Volumes /dev/disk3 190 26 156 15% /private/var/run /dev/disk4 1926 150 1680 9% /private/var/log /dev/disk5 2918 150 2624 6% /private/tmp /dev/disk6 2918 370 2404 14% /private/var/db 141.211.159.63:/Volumes/Images/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0 1952458672 80921944 1871536728 5% /private/tmp/netboot /dev/disk0s2 70070352 108664 69961688 1% /Volumes/Macintosh /dev/disk0s3 163659456 192 163659264 1% /Volumes/WINDOWS Source information: -rw-r--r-- 1 501 admin 9031569818 Nov 8 00:39 /tmp/netboot/Resources/Disk Images/mini-osx.dmg 20:20:08 Initiating ASR restore... 20:20:22 Restoring... 21:49:37 Verifying... 21:56:20 Restore complete ======= NetRestore (v. 3.4.6): Mon Nov 17 21:56:28 UTC 2008 ======= Source: /tmp/netboot/Resources/Disk Images/mini-win.dmg Target: /Volumes/WINDOWS Target Device: /dev/disk0s3 Arguments: --noprompt --erase Path to NetRestore: /Applications/Utilities/NetRestore.app/ NetBooted: Yes Boot volume OS info: Operating System: 10.5.1 (9B2117) Mach kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 9.1.1: Fri Dec 14 19:00:14 PST 2007; root:xnu-1228.1.30~1/RELEASE_I386 Kernel configured for up to 2 processors. 2 processors are physically available. 2 processors are logically available. Processor type: i486 (Intel 80486) Processors active: 0 1 Primary memory available: 2.00 gigabytes Default processor set: 31 tasks, 109 threads, 2 processors Load average: 0.21, Mach factor: 1.77 Mounted volume information: Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/disk1s9 3773896 3018240 717920 81% / devfs 226 226 0 100% /dev fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev /dev/disk2 934 16 872 2% /Volumes /dev/disk3 190 28 154 16% /private/var/run /dev/disk4 1926 230 1600 13% /private/var/log /dev/disk5 2918 150 2624 6% /private/tmp /dev/disk6 2918 370 2404 14% /private/var/db 141.211.159.63:/Volumes/Images/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0 1952458672 80921944 1871536728 5% /private/tmp/netboot /dev/disk0s3 163659456 192 163659264 1% /Volumes/WINDOWS /dev/disk0s2 70070352 37334368 32735984 54% /Volumes/MAC-CLONE Source information: -rw-r--r-- 1 501 admin 6491559556 Nov 10 20:14 /tmp/netboot/Resources/Disk Images/mini-win.dmg 21:56:28 Initiating ASR restore... Could not change the partition typeMounting volume: /dev/disk0s3 (0)... succeeded Failed to grab a copy of the boot.ini file Ejecting device: /dev/disk0 (0)... succeeded NTFS start sector: 70742136 Removing the NTFS partition from the partition table... succeeded Ejecting device: /dev/disk0 (0)... succeeded Adjusting entries in the partition table... succeeded Ejecting device: /dev/disk0 (0)... succeeded Adding the NTFS partition to the partition table... succeeded Ejecting device: /dev/disk0 (0)... failed, trying again Ejecting device: /dev/disk0 (1)... succeeded Resizing the NTFS volume to extend to the limit of the partition... ntfsresize v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0) Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument. ERROR(22): Opening '/dev/disk0s3' as NTFS failed: Invalid argument The device '/dev/disk0s3' doesn't have a valid NTFS. Maybe you selected the wrong partition? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/hda, not /dev/hda1)? This error might also occur if the disk was incorrectly repartitioned (see the ntfsresize FAQ).

I'm going to take notes here as I go through the process this time. ----- I have a partition on the NetBoot server called Images. Under Images, there's the NetBootSP0 share point. In the share point, under /Resources/Disk Images, I have DMG masters of sysprepped Windows and OSX. ----- On the NetBoot server: Launch NetRestore Helper Select "Create NetInstall-Set" tab Accept default Advanced settings Click "Save NetInstall-Restore set" button Save set to /Volumes/Images/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0 NetRestore: Disk image called "NetInstall-Restore" mounts on desktop NetRestore: Copying System files to disk image... Select "Yes" when asked to modify NetRestore configurations NetRestore window appears. This is where I sort of start to get confused. What should I select in the "Source" and "Target" fields now? Just for kicks, I added my two configurations, chose Full Automation, and configured the Preferences/Configurations. Enabled the new NetInstall Image and set it as Default. Booted a test Mini to NetBoot. Now it's successfully restoring the Mac side with no user intervention - looks like I'm getting there. I wonder what will happen after it finishes this first partition.

Well, thanks! In the past, I've successfully netbooted and restored each side individually by choosing the images from the NetRestore interface on the client side, but my goal is to get this automated so all I have to do is boot to the NetBoot server and the images will automatically apply. I'm getting stuck at the point after I have created my DMGs and am trying to create a NetInstall-Set. I choose "edit configurations," and have created configurations for both my Windows and Mac partitions. However, I'm not clear on what to do next. I have an open NetRestore window, an open NetRestore Helper window, and a mounted NetInstall-Restore volume on my desktop. I guess I'm confused about how to save my changes and additions to the configurations. If I close the NetRestore Helper window and the NetRestore window, the NetInstall-Restore disk stays mounted on my desktop. Is this what's supposed to happen?

I understand. I was pretty close to getting NetRestore to work, but never quite got there. The docs for DeployStudio are pretty much useless, so I'm going back to see if I can figure out NetRestore. I just wish there was a good tutorial on how to do dual-boot deployments. I found this forum recently and it sure seems like the place to post when I have questions about this sort of thing, though.

Do you know anything about DeployStudio? It looks great but the documentation is pretty lacking. I'm just getting started, trying to get a dual-boot deployment situation working.