Mac capture and deploy solutions
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Server
- FOG Version: 1.4.3
- OS: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Client
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Description
How does eveyone handle MacOS, since you can’t resize the partition? I’m new to Fog, and have Windows working, starting on trying to get Mac working too. I’m able to boot via iPXE on USB and capture the image, but the machine I used is 512GB. I’d have to deploy to the same size drive, correct?
Could I install MacOS on a 16GB USB drive and capture that image? But then when I deploy to other Mac machines, would I be stuck with a 16GB OS drive?
Currently we use Kace to image Windows and Apple Server to image Mac, Fog would let us consolidate and add Linux support…
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First let me say, we do have people who are successful deploying MacOS. I can also say I have no practice experience imaging Mac computers. You have got over the initial hump of being able to boot into the FOG menu. That is where most are getting hung up.
Are you saying that you captured the master image as single disk resizeable and its not resizing after deployment?
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ItIt’s my understanding, from reading these forums, that MacOS partitions are not resizable…
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@msnyder said in Mac capture and deploy solutions:
MacOS partitions are not resizable << @Developers opinion please??
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@george1421 @msnyder From my point of view FOG should be able to resize and deploy to a bigger disk as it can handle GPT. But I have to admit that I haven’t tried it myself so far as we always only had same Macs with identical disk size back at my old working place. Give it a try and see how it goes. If there is an issue with resizing on Mac then we should be able to fix this.
Make sure you don’t use CoreStorage or disk encryption as this would most likely make resizing impossible.
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I will try…
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Nope… Same error I remember getting the first time I tried capturing MacOS: Invalid Operating System id: Apple Mac OS (8) (validResizeOS)
Moderator inserted image copied from imgur (geo1421)
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Here is the post I saw that made me believe MacOS cannot be resized: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7627/invalid-operating-system-id-apple-mac-os-8/4
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@msnyder Wohooo, obviously I haven’t thought enough before writing. Missing some sleep here.
Right, resizing the partitions on a GPT disk is not the actual issue. It’s the HFS+ filesystem that cannot be resized. Looks like GParted is at least able to shrink HFS+ filesystems but we wouldn’t be able to grow it.
I am sure you can use Mac’s diskutil to grow the filesystem after deploying it. Would that be an option for you?
Here is a kind of funny conversation on this on the net as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1mwgpl/could_we_add_grow_support_to_hfsprogs/
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@Sebastian-Roth So you are saying to use my idea of installing MacOS on a small 16GB USB key for the capture, then deploy to Macs that have a much larger hard drive and expand using Apple disk utility?
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@msnyder If I understand Sebastian’s post correctly. The source size of the disk doesn’t matter much since FOG can shrink the disk image. The issue is fog can’t expand it because of the HFS format.
I can tell you before we switched to FOG 1.3.x, 1.2.0 didn’t expand disks (in windows) very well at all. What we would do is build our reference image on a 40GB VM and then capture and deploy that. That 40GB disk was smaller than any hardware that we would deploy to. Then in windows there is a batch file that gets run after windows setup completes call setupcomplete.cmd. Inside there we would run the diskpart commands to expand the deployed
drive size to the entire size of the physical disk. This method worked well, but now it works much better that we don’t need to do that anymore.You may have to do something similar for MacOS.
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@george1421 Ok, makes sense, except can’t do a Mac VM, but like you said, that’s not as important than expanding the disk…
Thanks
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@msnyder Maybe this will be of interest to you? https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7261/mac-os-x-resizeable-disk-support
