HS Mac lab: what's the lastest best way to do a mass system install?

[Mr645]

I remember a tech opening the computer lab at a new school. over 100 eMacs. They went from eMac to eMac with FW drives and clones the drive to each eMac. They said it was going to take about 30-35 hours to get all of the computers up and running, they were hoping to have them all up before the school opened 2 days later. The Principal was not pleased, but the Dell business lab was not going to up and running for 2 more weeks.

Jon

[endymion]

OS X Server with netboot to image your machines is the simplest, fastest approach. Using NetRestore is not that difficult!

Your mileage may vary - it ought to be possible to make netboot work without OS X Server:

http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/hardware...oot_server

However I myself have tried this, feel like I know what I'm doing, and failed to get it to work. (I can get to the point where the mach boot files are tftp'd, but it doesn't continue the boot process.)

Heck, I think if you just need netboot and not all the other services, you can even get away with a 10-client license server for $500 ($400 for schools I think) since you're not establishing AFP connections for the boot (it works over NFS) and you are using the same login accounts...

There's also a nice utility called radmind that, while not easy to get working at first, will do the trick fairly nicely. Install the client on all your machines, set up one Mac as a server and one as your master image source, and then sync the rest of them to the server after you've uploaded the master image set. It's also great for cleaning up minor messes once all your Macs have been imaged by another method...

http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I've been doing this for a while now and know what I'm doing.
g=

[john-o]

Thanks, but we're already in the midst of the FW exponential 'daisy chain' technique. It's goin pretty well, and should be done by late tomorrow. I'll check out radmind for sure though. Looks like a nice alternative to spending the big bucks on ARD!

John-o