Tuesday 17 December 2013

installing iLife through Apple Remote Desktop Task Server

So, I need to install iLife '09 through ARD Task Server on 17 machines. When install the iLife '09.mpkg file from my machine straight to one machine it works fine. If I give it the option to use the task server it comes up with:
Completed but failed on 1 package ""

In console on that machine I found this line:

17/12/2013 16:03:26.476 com.apple.RemoteDesktop.agent: iLife09.mpkg/Contents/Installers/iPhoto.mpkg/Contents/Installers/iPhotoContent.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz: (Empty error message)


I tried renaming the mpkg file so as not to have the '09 but did not effect it.

I'm now trying it from the command line. The plan is to just send some commands to the machine to mount the server share, and run the installer:

mkdir /Volumes/YourTMPFolder
mount -t afp afp://admin:yourPassword@your.server.here/YourShare /Volumes/YourTMPFolder
installer -package /Volumes//Volumes/YourTMPFolder/iLife09.mpkg -target /
umount /Volumes/YourTMPFolder

Works perfectly!


Friday 6 December 2013

Apple Mac bootcamp reimaging with Windows 7 Blue Screen

We've been testing out a new re-imaging process for our Apple macs specifically to re-image them with Windows 7. It means that the imaging process is the same for all Windows 7 machines.

The trouble we are having is that after about 10 mins or less, the windows 7 machine, both iMacs and Mac Pro's, blue screen.

Unfortunately, the blue screen itself does not provide any answers. I haven't had a good look at the dmp files.

I did a google search and found this and this. Both of these forums are looking at an AppleMNT.sys problem, associated with mounting HFS volumes. I shall give this a go.