Cloning Mac OS 10.2 from a laptop to an iMac

W

willmac

Registered
Hi all,
I have a Lombard Powerbook and iMac DV. Recently I have been neglecting the iMac and I need a way of keeping both systems up to date. Would it be possible via ethernet to clone my system from the Powerbook to the iMac?

Once I have done this I would like to be able to update modified files between the two machines. Therefore does anyone know of an open source file synchronisation app that I could use over ethernet?

Cheers

Will
 
See if you can use Retrospect to back up your iBook to the iMac... although it might try to overwrite the stuff that already exists there; I haven't used it before, so if you can access it, play around and see what you can do.
 
Psync sounds like a good option. Thanks for the info. I would like to use Retrospect but my budget won't allow it.

will
 
This is the nearest thread I could find to what I wanted and I hope I can ask this:

I have a PowerBook G4 with superdive permanently connected to the internet (dsl through a firewall) and I keep it very up-to-date with security and general software updates. Running OS 10.3.9 Darwin 7.9.0.

I have a family pack licence of the OS and three other macs: iBook G3 with combo drive and 2 iMac G3's, one combo, one cd drive only, I think (not used much).

Can I use my powerBook to act as a sort of base for the others to synch to to maintain the system updates and so on? I wondered if this were possible using the idea of a target startup (holding down T) on the ones I wanted to be updated by the powerBook and then what??? I have no idea what to do next, or even if anything is possible without using some third-party software (I don't have any).

I have a feeling - and I hope it is right - that I should be able to use the fully up-to-date system to maintain the others without having to go through the process of connecting them to the internet and updating each individually.
 
willmac said:
Hi all,
I have a Lombard Powerbook and iMac DV. Recently I have been neglecting the iMac and I need a way of keeping both systems up to date. Would it be possible via ethernet to clone my system from the Powerbook to the iMac?
Click to expand...
I have never tried that and don't have a second Mac to check things out on. I have made a disk image of my internal, using an Ethernet cable, on a Mac extended formated firewire drive connected to a PC through a Router. I always suspected that I would be able to restore my internal by reversing this process, but, alas, I have never tried.

But, I just checked, and, yes, in prinicple, I could restore my internal over our network using the disk image and Disk Utiliity. So, you could make a disk image of your iMac internal, using Ethernet, and store it on your pBook to cover a worst possible case scenario and then try cloning Tiger to its internal using Ethernet. To get your iMac restored from the disk image if necessary, hopefully you could reverse the disk image process using Ethernet, but might need to use an external USB drive (worst possible case).
 
Ghost -- you're replying to a post that's two years old!

hangslot said:
Can I use my powerBook to act as a sort of base for the others to synch to to maintain the system updates and so on? I wondered if this were possible using the idea of a target startup (holding down T) on the ones I wanted to be updated by the powerBook and then what??? I have no idea what to do next, or even if anything is possible without using some third-party software (I don't have any).

I have a feeling - and I hope it is right - that I should be able to use the fully up-to-date system to maintain the others without having to go through the process of connecting them to the internet and updating each individually.
Click to expand...

One thing that you can do is, instead of letting Software Update download each update on each individual computer is simply highlight all the updates, then select "Download Only" from the "Update" menu. Then you can copy the update to multiple computers for local installation.

Be careful with this approach, though -- Software Update sometimes shows you system-specific updates, like firmware updates and the like that may not be intended for use on machines other than the one it was downloaded on.

If you've got the budget, Mac OS X Server allows you to set up a sort-of "repository" for system updates, where client machines can simply connect to the server machine for software updates instead of doing via the internet. May be a little overkill for your situation, though, but that's entirely up to you.
 
hangslot said:
I wondered if this were possible using the idea of a target startup (holding down T) on the ones I wanted to be updated by the powerBook and then what??? I have no idea what to do next, or even if anything is possible without using some third-party software (I don't have any).
Click to expand...
Do all your Macs have firewire ports? If not, then what you want to do is going to get out of hand fast.
 
Yes, all have firewire. The oldest is a blue iMac G3 500 with (it is im my holiday cottage so a guess/recall) a DVDROM drive. The other iMac (G3 700) is a grey one with a CDRW, the iBook (G3 600) also has CDRW. The powerBook (G4 1GHz Superdrive) I use daily and is the one I keep fresh up-to-date.

I can, of course, just connect each up to the DSL line and run a software update overnight. That'd mean transporting one of them back in the car some time and I was hoping to be able to avoid this by taking the notebook with a "good" system on it and using it to update the other(s).

I guess I have to update my linux machines individually (different processors) so I cannot complain if I have to do the Macs similarly :D
 
Cos im tryiing to do something similar - clone a working laptop install of 10.2.4 to a G3 Imac . its all gone ok but the Imac wont boot to the desktop - seems to start up normally and loads everything id expect but just give me a spinning rainbow cursor alternating to the arrow and back again.
 
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