Complied Configuration

[Bukira]

Hi,

How many other people are using these,

I have been experimenting with them for the past few weeks,

My findings are:

They seems to significantly improve the imaging time, my 9.2GB complied configuration DMG takes only 18 minutes to deploy to a 100BaseT client and it would normally take 45 minutes to deploy without the complied configuration.

I also think this may help to solve the Casper imaging crashing issues.

Issues i have found:

If the resulting image size is going to be over 20GB then complied configuration fails to work, i have been working with JAMF to find the issue but no joy, my solution is to manually create a sparseimage n the Casper share compiled configurations folder with the name of the configuration and all seems to work fine after that.

It takes a long time to compiled the configurations, an install that normally takes 45mins can take 60-70 minutes to compile, thats with a 1GB admin machine

It also naturally takes up more space on the share

Certain packages require authorization to install so that means entering your username and password a lot during the complying, so they compile cannot be initialed and just left to run.

If you make any changes to a configuration you have recompile every time

However when done i think the advantages out way the disadvantages

Anyone else had any poor experiences?

How big are your configurations?

Criss Criss Myers
Senior Customer Support Analyst (Mac Services)
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Business Support Team
Library 301
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5054
01772 895054

[ernstcs]

I've started to dabble with it. None of my compiled images top 20GB. The block copy imaging is so fast I thought something was wrong a few times, but it wasn't. =)

It does take a while to compile, but you have to keep in mind it is going to take longer than just the normal image process of that configuration. The tool has to create an image of all of this and then it scans it for restore as well so there is some additional work that needs to be done there.

I compile my configurations on one of my restore images so it's running as root so no prompts for passwords. =)

Overall, very cool...and I'm still looking into how it deals with Standard Configurations versus Smart Configurations underneath. I figured you could compile the Standard and then the Smart ones underneath would use it and then install the bits and bytes it's missing, but that doesn't appear to be the case, but still checking into that, may have been another issue.

Craig E

[Bukira]

Very very true

but it doesnt install any At Reboot scripts nor the CS dmg's but apart
from that it ace.

Just any configs for 20gb need that pre sparseimage creation

Criss

Criss Myers
Senior Customer Support Analyst (Mac Services)
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Business Support Team
Library 301
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5054
01772 895054

[#4]

We started using this when Nick came down a few weeks ago. I found it drops the image in about 20 minutes instead of an hour. Our image is 17G in size, so this was a great improvement. I don't like that you have to re-compile and babysit it for user name and passwords.

I think the pro's out weigh the con's in a big way. I noticed the same con's you mentioned.

---

Kathie Iorizzo
Lower School Technician
The Latin School of Chicago
kiorizzo at latinschool.org
312.582.6136

[#5]

Hi

I use only 1 compiled image, it is 5.7GB and it works really fine and fast. Around 20 min to load, with partition and installation of Windows XP system also

I also have rEfit running on the image.
I also had the issue with the password while compiling the image, but it is a minor thing.
cheers

carmelo lopez