Distributing buildsets of OSX

emh_alpha1

Registered
Hi, I'm trying to distribute a build-set of OSX to a large number of lab workstations on our campus using Rsync. The build is distributing fine - all files are present with the exact owner, group and permissions of the original build. The build will launch and run fine in single-user mode, but in multi-user mode, when I login with a local workstation account at the login screen, it spins the beach-ball and sits there for about 2 hours until it times out. It then returns to the login display, or sometimes it gets stuck on a blue screen.

Any ideas? Obviously I need to solve this problem - please don't just tell me to reinstall from the original CDs.

Thanks in advance

EMH
 
Does Apple provide support for this type of distribution? Will a disk image loaded over a network function? Have you tried support from the Apple 10.2 server techs?
 
Thanks for your suggestions. I've had a look at the net-restore option with Netboot before. Unfortunately, our network is a huge bloated beastie, and we found Netboot was just too slow for us to use. Also the admins threw a small mental everytime i enabled Netboot because it starts DHCP, and apparently they have a problem with there being a second DHCP server on the network.

Apple are generally next to useless for Support information.

I've solved the problem with the image not allowing login - turns out Rsync was unhappy with copying the Network service in /system/library/startupitems. Once i fixed that up the login worked just fine.

Mostly its working okay now. However i still sometimes get partial transfer error (23?) with Rsync. The Rsync crash logs report that the thread crashed and was terminated:

Date/Time: 2002-12-12 12:55:50 +1300
OS Version: 10.2.2 (Build 6F21)
Host: Coruscant

Command: rsync
PID: 29491

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0xbff7feb0

Thread 0 Crashed:
#0 0x000063b8 in srctmp_cleanup (sender.c:868)
#1 0x00004854 in _exit_cleanup (cleanup.c:58)
#2 0x0000e380 in rwrite (log.c:281)
#3 0x0000e480 in rprintf (log.c:324)
#4 0x0000eca8 in log_exit (log.c:567)
#5 0x000049e0 in _exit_cleanup (cleanup.c:93)

<-- i've cut this down as the above 5 lines repeat for about 500 lines

PPC Thread State:
srr0: 0x000063b8 srr1: 0x0000f030 vrsave: 0x00000000
xer: 0x00000000 lr: 0x00004854 ctr: 0x90005700 mq: 0x00000000
r0: 0x00004854 r1: 0xbff80300 r2: 0x00000000 r3: 0x00000001
r4: 0x00000000 r5: 0xbff80270 r6: 0xbff802e0 r7: 0x0000000a
r8: 0x00000003 r9: 0x0003320c r10: 0x00000000 r11: 0xa0004524
r12: 0x90005700 r13: 0xffffffff r14: 0x00000000 r15: 0xffffffff
r16: 0x00000000 r17: 0xbfff4758 r18: 0x00000002 r19: 0x00000001
r20: 0x0003315c r21: 0xbfff45d8 r22: 0x00000001 r23: 0xbfff46d8
r24: 0x00000040 r25: 0x00000001 r26: 0x0000000d r27: 0x0002cbd8
r28: 0x00000117 r29: 0x0000000d r30: 0xa0000d84 r31: 0x000047f4

**********

Any further ideas? Or can anyone divine anything meaningful from the above?

Thanks in advance

EMH.
 
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