Netboot and 3rd Party Apps

J

jedig33k

Registered
Hello all,

I am fairly new to the Mac world. I have been given the task of setting up 10 Macs in our testing environment. After each test is run, a fresh OS image is recommended before the next test. To accomplish this I have setup our Mac OS server to use Netboot. I have this working great. But now I need to have some 3rd Party applications available for use in our tests. I would like to have the application stored on the Server and have the test vendors access the application through the netboot image. The tester would netboot up their machine, go to the Applications directory and fire up the app. Is there a way to do this? I have read allot on Netboot, but haven't found anything pertaining to this. Any links or a how to would be great!

Thanks.
 
This is fairly simple to achieve, just build your initial image with the applications you need pre-installed and then create the netboot image using System Image Utility. All the main applications I have tried have worked.

The only word of caution is that without an extremely fast network connection it is painfully slow. You might be better creating net install images and pulling them down to the Macs as and when you need them.
 
OK, I can give that a try. I originally built the netboot images via the installer CD's from each Mac. But your saying that I should install the apps on...lets say my ibook, then create an image, copy this image to my Mac server and then set it up for netboot.
I do understand that it is pretty slow, but it seems that our other option of a net install usually takes up to a half hour to complete. This may be our only option though it seems. Managment looks at our windows imaging and say's, "Hey, how come it's not as fast as that windows box?" Our windows box's use disk to disk imaging via Symantec Ghost. A XP image takes under 3 minutes. From everything that I have read, it seems Mac uses a bit by bit copy of the hard drive, thus the time.
 
You should be able to build a generic image on a Mac using a Tiger installation DVD that will work for all your Macs rather than one for each using a restore disk. Configure it with settings and applications and then clone it using Carbon Copy Cloner and build the net boot or netinstall image from there.

It might take about half an hour to install, but that would take a grand total of five hours to do all of them. Your management seem to have even less patience than mine if that is a problem.
 
Hello all,

I am fairly new to the Mac world. I have been given the task of setting up 10 Macs in our testing environment. After each test is run, a fresh OS image is recommended before the next test. To accomplish this I have setup our Mac OS server to use Netboot. I have this working great. But now I need to have some 3rd Party applications available for use in our tests. I would like to have the application stored on the Server and have the test vendors access the application through the netboot image. The tester would netboot up their machine, go to the Applications directory and fire up the app. Is there a way to do this? I have read allot on Netboot, but haven't found anything pertaining to this. Any links or a how to would be great!

Thanks.
 
Sorry about the same post again, please ignore it. I posted the question in the "Questions/Response" section early this week and then posted the same question in the forum. Then today, I get an email telling me that my origianal question from the Q/R spot would be automatically forwarded to the Forums! ::angel::

Sorry again.

Thanks all for the tips, I got it working great!
 
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