Help with Custom MacOs Build

[sneakChamber]

HI,
I am trying to create a custom MacOs Build for some Macbooks in our office... The only condition is that it has to be USB bootable...

I've used macOS Mojave Patcher, which creates a bootable USB install of Vanilla Mojave. I've also used AutoDMG to create a custom build of Mojave, but it creates a DMG file, which after much mucking around just creates an unbootable memory pen...

My question is this... Does anyone know a fairly simplistic way to create a bootable version of Mojave, from USB, which I can customise?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Fishrrman]

"My question is this... Does anyone know a fairly simplistic way to create a bootable version of Mojave, from USB, which I can customise?"

Ummmmm.......
How about using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper...?

 

[sneakChamber]

"My question is this... Does anyone know a fairly simplistic way to create a bootable version of Mojave, from USB, which I can customise?"

Ummmmm.......
How about using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper...?

I will check those out, thank you Would prefer something free though...
[doublepost=1540225686][/doublepost]CCC is looking like a likely contender. Thank you for your input... I am still open to other suggestions while I try this one out though

 

[Fishrrman]

Both CCC and SD are FREE to download and use for 30 days.

SD will create a "full clone" FOREVER without having to pay and register the product.
The only "catch" is if you want to do incremental (not full) backups, then you have to register it.

 

[BLUEDOG314]

I would say the easiest thing to do is just use all build in tools. Are you working with like say 32GB flash drives that you want to run macos on and just move them around? Not 100% sure what your goal is here. I would say, take a computer and partition it in two parts, one part gets say 20-25GB for an APFS container, one gets jhfs+ or something that you don't have to use. Install Mojave on the APFS container and customize it however you want. Then plug that flash drive into another system booted to Mojave but not from that flash drive. Unmount the flash drive, then in terminal find the disk identifier for the APFS container on the flash drive, this will be like disk2s1 or something like that. Then run 'hdiutil create -srcdevice /dev/disk2s1 -format UDZO ~/Desktop' which will make that APFS container into an image. Next use asr in terminal to imagescan the image for restore. From there you can take a bunch of flash drives with APFS containers on them and use asr restore to quickly put that image on the drive and it should be bootable.

 

[sneakChamber]

I think my question may have got blown out of proportion a little... I tried CCC and it does what I want, but then macOS is only bootable and usable from the Pen drive... What I am trying to achieve is this;

1. USB Bootable install of Mojave (i.e. will install Mojave FROM the USB drive).
2. The ability to add my own Apps into bootable media
3. Have my own apps installed as part of install/update process

I am not cloning my Mac HD, I am creating a clean installable version, with my own Apps. That could potentially be deployed to a blank Macbook
[doublepost=1540285364][/doublepost]

I would say the easiest thing to do is just use all build in tools. Are you working with like say 32GB flash drives that you want to run macos on and just move them around? Not 100% sure what your goal is here. I would say, take a computer and partition it in two parts, one part gets say 20-25GB for an APFS container, one gets jhfs+ or something that you don't have to use. Install Mojave on the APFS container and customize it however you want. Then plug that flash drive into another system booted to Mojave but not from that flash drive. Unmount the flash drive, then in terminal find the disk identifier for the APFS container on the flash drive, this will be like disk2s1 or something like that. Then run 'hdiutil create -srcdevice /dev/disk2s1 -format UDZO ~/Desktop' which will make that APFS container into an image. Next use asr in terminal to imagescan the image for restore. From there you can take a bunch of flash drives with APFS containers on them and use asr restore to quickly put that image on the drive and it should be bootable.

While I like this approach, Sadly I don't have the space available to partition the HD in this way, else this would be ideal... I just remember on Windows you could roll your own installs, and I didn't want to resort to a Mojave USB installer, then manually copying the files over to the Apps folder... I wanted to roll my own build, as it were.

 

[Lunder89]

AutoDMG is the way to go. You when the DMG is created, you copy that to a macOS Recovery USB drive. And then you boot from the Recovery drive, open Disk utility and restores the Macs harddrive from the DMG file.

Not to advertise or anything, but I actually did a couple of YouTube videos about this, they are made for Sierra, but work for Mojave as well. (Not High Sierra for some reason).

The YouTube playlist is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq8v1JPamUJb2_gZdWiBeWPdXNowDM6bo

It sounds like this is what you want...

 

[sneakChamber]

I guess it's an education piece... As I thought AutoDMG just created a bootable USB with options... but when it didn't I was a little disappointed... So do I copy the DMG to USB pen and then restore from it? Perfect. I will give it a go and let you know how I get on

 

[sneakChamber]

How do I make the drive bootable. AutoDMG doesn't seem to include those files?

 

[Lunder89]

You need to create a bootable USB drive yourself. Download macOS Mojave from the App Store, and then follow the instructions in part 2 (3:30 is the timecode where it starts).

The terminal command for creating the Mojave Recovery USB is a little different. You can see how to create that here:

 

[sneakChamber]

That works a treat, thank you