comp.sys.mac.advocacy

ZnU wrote:
> In article
> ,
> Alan Baker wrote:
>
>> In article ,
>> Steve de Mena wrote:
>
>>> A photoshop or any application install image won't boot up by itself
>>> without an OS loaded. These images load up and install operating
>>> systems, period, before loading the startup partition on the computer.
>>>
>>> Steve
>> Funny. Reality disagrees with you.
>>
>> You can *create* installation images with this software, Steve. You can
>> create an image that will start up a Mac and instead of installing the
>> OS, install whatever else you'd like.
>
> Or you could just use Apple Remote Desktop's package installation
> feature. Or (this being OS X, where many apps are self-contained), just
> use its file copying feature. Both work in broadcast mode, so installing
> a package across an entire subnet can be as fast as installing one on a
> single machine.

It's not "or". Netinstall will not install applications to existing
systems. Only entire startup OS images (plus additional
customizations, tools, applications, and utilities).

Of course Apple Remote Desktop will install applications remotely.
Thats what it was designed for. But I don't see it scaling to 50,000
machines located at 2,000 sites around the globe (which was the
original topic).

I think you meant to say "multicast" mode (not "broadcast" mode). And
typically many systems are offline when a package is sent, and they
are installed later on (when they come online) in unicast mode (in
groups of 10).

This is an interesting article on these technologies and of course
confirm what I said about Netinstall being a disk-image tool.:
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=445094

"In the case of NetInstall, the computer boots directly from the
server, using Apple’s NetBoot technology but launches into the Mac OS
X installer application and overlays the computer’s local hard drive
with the disk image instead of loading the Mac OS X environment."

Steve