Help with image tasks

[Gary T]

Mac imaging help

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HI Folks,

I am relatively new to Apples and currently administer over 20 iMACs and 8 Mac Book Pros. We are about to add more iMACs so I would like to automate the imaging process a bit more. I’m using OS X Mountain Lion Server and all of the MACs have been upgraded to Mountain Lion. I am using system image utility to create the image and then NetInstall to deploy the image. Everything works fine, however I would like to stream line things a bit. I have just purchased ARD and finding that the command line is pretty handy.

I’ve come across the following command
bless - -netboot - -server bsdp://server IP

I have sent this (along with a restart command) to an iMAC and it restarts the computer in network boot mode. This is great – no more pressing down the ‘N’ key to network boot! One last hurdle and I don’t have to treck across the campus – is there another command or switch to make it install on the hard drive rather than manually selecting the drive?

Also need a bit of a pointer in the best way to rename the computers and join them to Active Directory.

Any help on these matters would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards

Gary

 

[DJLC]

I think you'd be better served using DeployStudio for this. Check it out.

 

[guzhogi]

I think you'd be better served using DeployStudio for this. Check it out.

The school district I work for also uses DeployStudio. It's pretty good. Also automates partitioning and other tasks as well. I've never set it up myself so I don't know all the stuff you can do with it.

 

[DJLC]

To elaborate: DeployStudio can totally do what you want. Set up an imaging workflow in DS Admin — it can image to the first hard drive it finds with no intervention. On the first boot, you can have it run scripts that will rename it and/or bind it to OD or AD. You can also configure multiple partitions / images if you wanted to deploy BootCamp at the same time. Combine that power with your NetBoot ARD command and you're golden!

FWIW, I've never been able to get one of my own NetBoot images to work. Always had to go through DeployStudio!