Recovery Partition in Lion

Matt
Valued Contributor

Is there anyway to combine the pre-built Lion Recovery HD with the one Casper installs?

--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

16 REPLIES 16

donmontalvo
Esteemed Contributor III

The BaseSystem.dmg (invisible, at top level of InstallESD.dmg) can be added as an additional partition using Casper.

--
https://donmontalvo.com

noah_swanson
New Contributor

I was looking around and in terminal, disk utility has an option coreStorage (or cs) now and there were options to make a drive the recovery partition:

$ diskutil cs
Usage: diskutil [quiet] coreStorage|CS <verb> <options>, where <verb> is as follows:

list (Show status of CoreStorage volumes) info[rmation] (Get CoreStorage information by UUID or disk) convert (Convert a volume into a CoreStorage volume) revert (Revert a CoreStorage volume to its native type) create (Create a new CoreStorage logical volume group) delete (Delete a CoreStorage logical volume group) createVolume (Create a new CoreStorage logical volume) unlockVolume (Attach/mount a locked CoreStorage logical volume) changeVolumePassphrase (Change a CoreStorage logical volume's passphrase)

diskutil coreStorage <verb> with no options will provide help on that verb

I'm assuming you could convert the casper created partition? Not sure what it'll do as far as data on that drive though...

--Noah

dderusha
Contributor

I was looking around and in terminal, disk utility has an option coreStorage (or cs) now and there were options to make a drive the recovery partition:
On 7/26/11 10:55 AM, "Swanson Noah" <SwansonNoah at JohnDeere.com> wrote:

$ diskutil cs
Usage: diskutil [quiet] coreStorage|CS <verb> <options>, where <verb> is as follows:

list (Show status of CoreStorage volumes) info[rmation] (Get CoreStorage information by UUID or disk) convert (Convert a volume into a CoreStorage volume) revert (Revert a CoreStorage volume to its native type) create (Create a new CoreStorage logical volume group) delete (Delete a CoreStorage logical volume group) createVolume (Create a new CoreStorage logical volume) unlockVolume (Attach/mount a locked CoreStorage logical volume) changeVolumePassphrase (Change a CoreStorage logical volume's passphrase)

diskutil coreStorage <verb> with no options will provide help on that verb

I’m assuming you could convert the casper created partition? Not sure what it’ll do as far as data on that drive though…

--Noah

Noah-

We Were on a call with apple a few minutes ago.

They said the Apple recovery partition is a minimal install to get your system up and running.
When you are recovering, it dials out to an apple server to get the majority of the OS.

I don’t believe we would want to combine both worlds. Apple’s restore will provide the base lion image and none of your companies software. Apple is working on possibly offering image hosting. Apple mentioned boot holding command and R, which allows minimal services like surfing the web for help documentation to assist with troubleshooting.

They also mentioned licensing. If your company buys 2,000 licenses of lion client, you get one code and can install it on any Apple hardware anyway you want.

Dan De Rusha

nessts
Valued Contributor II

one would surmise, I have yet to check, but if the apple default recovery partition is basic enough to boot and run apples installer if it so happens that ASR is included in those basic functions, we could copy our compiled image to the system, maybe even install the imaging tool on this partition and image from there if need be?

--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

Matt
Valued Contributor

How about removing said partition all together?

--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

golbiga
Contributor III
Contributor III

If you want to use FileVault on any machine, you need to keep the Recovery Partition on there. Not sure what else requires it.

Thanks
Allen

Matt
Valued Contributor

No File Vault ever here. I would love to ditch this. All I need is another excuse for a tech to use the wrong restore partition.

--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

noah_swanson
New Contributor

Something I found is that when filevault IS enabled, it links to the user profiles on the machine. Not only that, whoever authenticates, the machine will automatically logon as them. For us, that means filevault is already out.

--Noah

talkingmoose
Moderator
Moderator

I'm not sure FileVault is necessarily linking to the accounts, although I
On 7/26/11 11:45 AM, "Swanson Noah" <SwansonNoah at JohnDeere.com> wrote:
could be wrong.

Instead, when you select the option in an account to let a user unlock the
drive then that gets stored in EFI. Once EFI boots then it passes the
credentials back to the Mac OS to log in the user. But once a Mac is at
the Mac OS login screen then anyone can log in since the drive's already
unlocked.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

jack_bishop
New Contributor III

The recovery partition is required for:

FileVault
Back to My Mac
Remote Wipe

If you won't be using any of these features, there is no need for the Apple recovery partition.

Jack

--
Jack E. Bishop
Network Engineer
NINDS(Contractor)

Matt
Valued Contributor

How do you disable get rid of it short of making a Composer OS Package?

--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

ImAMacGuy
Valued Contributor II

How do we extract this from the installESD file? I tried just a regular copy but couldn't :(

John Wojda
Lead System Engineer, DEI & Mobility
3333 Beverly Rd.  B2-338B
Hoffman Estates, IL 60179
Phone:  (847)286-7855
Page:  (224)532.3447
Team Lead DEI: Matt Beiriger
Team Lead Mobility: Chris Sta Ana
                   Mac Tip/Tricks/Self Service & Support

"Any time you choose to be inflexible in your approach to an unpredictable project you are already building failure into your plan"

Matt
Valued Contributor

Its a hidden file so you'll either need to show hidden files or chflag it.

--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

ImAMacGuy
Valued Contributor II

Thank you, got the file copied, dumped into casper admin, but it won't
let me select it as a recovery partition. So I tried to tell it' that
it's a Mac OS file and casper returned that it's not. I hate to ask -
but is there some baby steps on how to get this working?

John Wojda

Lead System Engineer, DEI & Mobility

3333 Beverly Rd. B2-338B

Hoffman Estates, IL 60179

Phone: (847)286-7855

Page: (224)532.3447

Team Lead DEI: Matt Beiriger
<mailto:mbeirig at searshc.com;jwojda at searshc.com?subject=John%20Wojda%20Fe
edback&body=I%20am%20contacting%20you%20regarding%20John%20Wojda.>

Team Lead Mobility: Chris
<mailto:cstaana at searshc.com;jwojda at searshc.com?subject=John%20Wojda%20Fe
edback&body=I%20am%20contacting%20you%20regarding%20John%20Wojda.> Sta
Ana

Mac Tip/Tricks/Self Service & Support
<http://bit.ly/gMa7TB>

"Any time you choose to be inflexible in your approach to an
unpredictable project you are already building failure into your plan"

jarednichols
Honored Contributor

If it were me, having not looked at this process mind you, I'd be copying the file to a temp location on the drive and using asr or hdiutil to restore it that way.

j
---
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

donmontalvo
Esteemed Contributor III

Ditto to copy the DMG somewhere, chflags to toggle hidden flag.

ditto /path/to/original /path/to/target/folder

chflags nohidden /path/to/target/folder/target

Don

--
https://donmontalvo.com