Disk with 2 partitioned: how to create the Recovery HD with Casper Imaging?

[Apfelpom]

Hi all,

I have a couple of 10.7 clients with two partitions on the internal disk. "Macintosh HD" with OS X 10.7.3 and a "Users-Volume" Partition with the user home folders.

I can't use Casper Imaging out of the box to partition the disk, because it has already two partitions and Casper doesn't seems to change anything.

For sure, I could walk from machine to machine and use the Carbon Copy Cloner feature to create the Recovery HD with an external disk. But I would love to find a way using Casper Imaging/Netboot.

Thanks,

Yann

[Apfelpom · Accepted solution]

Brunerd's script is amazing. It's first built a new DMG from the Lion Installer and HD Recovery update from Apple. In this new DMG there's a .command script. Ran this and it creates the partition with the Recovery HD on the fly.

Before:

C07CX0M7DD6K:~ localadmin$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            250.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Users-Volume            249.6 GB   disk0s3

And after:

C07CX0M7DD6K:~ localadmin$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            249.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5
   4:                  Apple_HFS Users-Volume            249.6 GB   disk0s3

BTW: the Recovery HD partition does not need to be disk0s3 (I thought it was mandatory). In my case the disk0s3 was already matched with the "Users-Volume".

So I'm thinking about a way to automate this, guess I will copy the DMG to a temp folder, open it and run the command line.

Thanks,

Yann

[rob_potvin]

Bonjour

I found this, you could use his instruction to make a script

http://www.dmitry-dulepov.com/2011/09/how-to-create-mac-os-x-lion-recovery.html

Hope that helps

Salut

[rob_potvin]

You can also pull off the BaseSytstem.dmg (Hidden on the Lion DMG)

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110717190509986

Then resize the Macintosh HD add a 1GB drive then image that across, you don't even have to netboot you could do this via a policy.

Once you have it created and everything is imaged, you would have to run this script from the jamf KB (https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/article.html?id=173)

#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount /dev/disk0s3
/usr/sbin/asr adjust -target /dev/disk0s3 -settype Apple_Boot

Let me know if you want some help on this one, would be a good to know and have.

[bentoms]

How were these macs imaged? Are you sure they do not have a recovery partition?

I ask as I image my macs from a 10.7 compiled OS then partition adding a users partition.

This means I have actually 3 partitions in the following order:

1) OS
2) Recovery
3) Users

which, works! For booting to recovery partition anyhow, I've not tried FileVault.

[donmontalvo]

@Rob Thanks for the tip. I'm not sure how I blew away my Recovery HD partition, but I was able to restore it in 15 minutes using your procedure.

I'm wondering if the Recovery HD partition ever gets upgraded when the OS is upgraded? I would hope Apple covered that base. If not, I'm hoping we can automate upgrade via Casper Policy. This really looks good. Thanks!

Don

[rob_potvin]

Yeah the recovery hd does get updated. There was a recovery HD update that came with 10.7.2.

I also think that apple can update it with an is update like 10.7.3 combo.

[rob_potvin]

@donmontalvo mind sharing what you did? Sounds pretty cool. Might evn help a few folk.

[Apfelpom]

@Ben: I actually have only 2 partitions on the drives:

#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            124.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Users-Volume            124.7 GB   disk0s3

I used Casper imaging to deploy a pre-compiled 10.7.3 Macintosh HD, so the Recovery HD partition was not built.

@Rob: Nice tricks, but how should I create the Recovery HD partition? Casper Imaging won't partition a drive with already more than 1 Partition I think.

I found this article/script which seems to partition the disk on the fly and add the recovery HD -- will give a try and report.
http://www.brunerd.com/blog/2012/03/21/update-create-lion-recoveryhd-partition-quickly-without-reins...

Thanks,

Yann

[Apfelpom · Accepted solution]

Brunerd's script is amazing. It's first built a new DMG from the Lion Installer and HD Recovery update from Apple. In this new DMG there's a .command script. Ran this and it creates the partition with the Recovery HD on the fly.

Before:

C07CX0M7DD6K:~ localadmin$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            250.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Users-Volume            249.6 GB   disk0s3

And after:

C07CX0M7DD6K:~ localadmin$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            249.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5
   4:                  Apple_HFS Users-Volume            249.6 GB   disk0s3

BTW: the Recovery HD partition does not need to be disk0s3 (I thought it was mandatory). In my case the disk0s3 was already matched with the "Users-Volume".

So I'm thinking about a way to automate this, guess I will copy the DMG to a temp folder, open it and run the command line.

Thanks,

Yann

[Apfelpom]

Hi Don,

I'm wondering if the Recovery HD partition ever gets upgraded when the OS is upgraded? I would hope Apple covered that base. If not, I'm hoping we can automate upgrade via Casper Policy.

I think you would be able to update/re-image the recovery HD the Brunerd's way :-)

Thanks, Yann

[rob_potvin]

Awesome! Share it...

[Apfelpom · Accepted solution]

Basically I build the updated "RecoveryHDUpdater_11D50.dmg" the way brunerd described here http://www.brunerd.com/blog/2012/03/21/update-create-lion-recoveryhd-partition-quickly-without-reins..., deploy the DMG to a temp folder and run this script (based on the .command file located in RecoveryHDUpdater_11D50.dmg but without the great interactivity -- don't need it now):

#!/bin/bash
MYPATH="/Volumes/Recovery HD Updater 10.7.3 11D50"
DEST="/"
DMG="/private/tmp/Casper/RecoveryHDUpdater_11D50.dmg"

#mount the dmg
hdiutil attach "$DMG"

#create Recovery partition
sudo "$MYPATH"/bin/dmtest ensureRecoveryPartition "$DEST" "$MYPATH"/etc/BaseSystem.dmg 0 0 "$MYPATH"/etc/BaseSystem.chunklist

#wait before unmounting
sleep 5

#unmount the dmg
hdiutil detach "$MYPATH"

hdiutil before...:

Office-SA-Mac mini:tmp localadmin$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            249.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Users-Volume            249.7 GB   disk0s3

...and after:

Office-SA-Mac mini:tmp localadmin$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            249.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5
   4:                  Apple_HFS Users-Volume            249.7 GB   disk0s3

Note that you can run the script more than once, it will not create a new partition. The current Users don't have to be logged out, so I think it could be deploy the every 15.

Thank's

Yann

[rob_potvin]

Awesome!! Thanks for sharing mate!