Casper Imaging for Windows

[BOBW]

Hi All,

Our Windows team has managed to get deploy studio to image the macs with a Windows PXE image from their servers using deploy studio. The good thing is Deploy studio actually mounts a network repository which can access that particular file, this will run a .bin automation file which will then boot into PXE and install windows.

Problem is being new to Casper, does it do anything similar? The .bin file will format the drive so unable to push it into the NBI... I think....

Im hoping someone else is doing this kind of thing? Staff purchase Macs and don't like the OS so we install windows without bootcamp using our PXE environment.

#!/bin/sh

umount /Volumes/Macintosh HD

dd if=/private/var/tmp/DSNetworkRepository/Files/MAC-ALTIRS-AUTOMATION-3Partition.bin of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=512

exit 0

[davidacland]

We haven't used Windows or dual booting on Macs for a while, last time I checked, Casper used Winclone as a method to get Windows installed.

The method you've described sounds like it would just need to run separately, so you would Netboot the Mac and run a script to mount the network volume and perform the other steps.

Using Casper imaging would probably make it harder to accomplish so I would stick just with plain Netboot and bash.

[russeller]

You don't need an Apple Server to Netboot. Check out BSDPy.

[Josh_Smith]

Staff purchase Macs and don't like the OS so we install windows

Oh users. I think I would fight that one pretty hard.

[bpavlov]

I dealt with that at one job. It's absolutely insane. It's also very telling of the kind of stuff you'd have to deal with if an IT department allows this.

[BOBW]

OK, our windows guy is a genius....

We are now using casper imaging to install Windows. Using PXE boot.

Genius I tell you!!

We are using the same script above to mount a network share, which then pulls down the .bin file, this partitions the drive to use altiris deployment server.

Anyway, yes we have this discussion regularly. A staff member sees a shiny object and wants one. Doesn't know how to use it and the faculty is unwilling to then buy another computer.

[Chris_Hafner]

First of all KUDOS!

Second, boy oh boy. Way to deal with an awkward situation. Too bad something far simpler like VMWare Fusion didn't cut it for you.

[BOBW]

yeah, VMware is also available, but some people are special and don't want to wait for it to start up......

[vnzolotov]

Hi C0up3,

We are also using Deploy Studio and Altiris to manage the Windows side on the Mac.

I am not too familiar with how Deploy Studio or Altiris (I didn't set those up) work but would you be able to explain a little more on how the script above lets you image the Windows side using Casper?

You said it mounts a share that holds this .bin file? Is this a bin file from Altiris?

[BOBW]

@vnzolotov Hi,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The bin file is what formats the drive and starts PXE boot. Like I said the Windows guy made this work so I cannot provide too much detail sorry.

Once the machine is partitioned using the bin file and added to the build group in altiris / AD then the image process kicks off automagically :)

[CapU]

Crazy!!
Oh wait. I have some staff members that are the same. I don't get it.