Installing Base Image

[j99mac]

I created a my base with Composer. Can this image be used Disk Utilities as restore image?
What is the best way to install a base image on a new Mac with out using NetBoot. Can Casper Image be used with out have it installed on NetBoot.

[stevewood]

Yes, your image can be used with Disk Utility, and Casper Imaging can be used without NetBoot. You'll need a bootable hard drive to boot your new Mac from, or you'll need to put the new machine in Target Disk Mode (TDM) and connect to another Mac that has access to the image and a copy of Casper Imaging.

If you are simply restoring the image onto the drive and not running a configuration policy that you setup in Casper Admin, then you can simply use Disk Utility to push the image to the new machine once booted from an external drive or TDM to another Mac.

If you are using a policy from Casper Admin, then you can use Casper Imaging to push the policy onto the machine.

HTH

[j99mac]

Thanks this very helpful. I am thing of doing to with Casper Imaging, as I need to bind the Mac to our network. Yes I am going to use policy from Casper Admin. Any other suggestion or things I should know when installing Base Image on a new Mac?

[tkimpton]

Or InstaDMG will create a never booted image, with updates included and the recovery partition.

The down side to using Composer for your base is that it is highly probable to have left over crud, network interfaces for different hardware models get screwed.

Personally I think InstaDMG is only viable for a modular imaging approach until JAMF can come up with Something to make InstallESD.dmg to work in a modular imaging workflow.

At the moment InstallESD.dmg will only work in a compiled configuration, which is not manageable if you change thing all the time and manage many configs.