[geeks] DVD install of MacOS 10.5.3 or 10.5.4

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: "Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net>
>Date: 2008/08/02 Sat PM 04:20:27 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] DVD install of MacOS 10.5.3 or 10.5.4

>On Sat, 2 Aug 2008, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>
>>> I've heard you can even install Office and Visual Studio from that
>>> procedure if you use DVD media, but there's the chance that the
>>> installation will take "too long" and the fixed-duration timer in the
>>> Windows installation program will kill that portion of setup.
>>
>> At $WORK we simply build an image manually, then use GHOST to deploy it
>> around the various machines...
>
>Meh, Ghost is okay.  The problem I have with Ghost is that the image
>quickly gets out-of-date, and then you're left with the prospect of either
>ghosting to a virgin system, updating, and re-making the image.  Or, you
>can just run a slew of updates after imaging a box, which defeats the
>purpose of the operation.
>
>The beauty of nLite is that you just provide updated patch packages, and
>respin the ISO.

But how to update/re-image a computer lab of 25-30 systems without booting each of the systems off a burned ISO - Ghost requires a boot, but once booted, the CD is removed and the system loads the image over the network.

What I'd like would be a solution (I'm sure it exists, I just don't know what it is) that responds to a PXE boot request and downloads a new image if available, if not, the boot times out and the system boots to the local HD. The idea being, to re-image a system, all I need to do is put a file (image) in a particular folder and the next time the system is powered-up, the system is re-imaged. With BIOS settings our systems can power-up early enough to avoid impacting the first class period.

Lionel