Upgrading an xserve from Tiger to Leopard

[John Summerfield]

Fred Reitberger wrote:
G'day, Fred.
> John,
> 
> If you have an external disk and a system with a DVD drive then you can 
> create a partition on the external drive large enough to hold the 
> installer image.  Then use disk utility to restore the install disk to 
> the hard disk partition.  You then will have an install drive you can 
> use.  One word of caution, when using restore in disk utility drag the 
> root partition of the DVD to the source window.  If you drag the 
> installer partition the drive will not be bootable.
> 
> I do this all of the time and in fact have used a 10gig USB stick this 
> way as well.  It makes for a very fast install!

I like the sound of the stick[1]; I don't have the install DVD to hand 
(It's at work, I'm home); is my 4 Gbyte sandisk cruser big enough?

My Mac lappy's only got USB1, does anyone know whether the USB copy can 
be made from Linux?

Copying to a real ATA disk is possible too[2], I imagine I can do that 
to the xserve in target mode; can I choose which disk to boot from?


[1] but I don't think I can boot it, this is G4. It might not be quick 
either, but if it doesn't keep stopping to ask stupid questions I don't 
care.
[2] From Linux to a disk in a USB2 enclosure, or from the xserve by 
mounting the DVD over NFS, or even target mode (I presume) by removing 
all other disks.


> 
> Fred
> 
> 
> 
> At 4:13 PM +0800 5/30/08, John Summerfield wrote:
>> Andrew Oliver wrote:
>>>
>>> On May 28, 2008, at 3:44 PM, John Summerfield wrote:
>>>
>>>> I was hoping this would be possible. Is the result of this asr 
>>>> command a bootable disk? To clone a disk on Linux, I'd want it 
>>>> unmounted and therefore that form would not be possible.
>>>
>>> As per 'man asr':
>>>
>>>> HISTORY
>>>>      Apple Software Restore got its start as a field service 
>>>> restoration tool
>>>>      used to reconfigure computers' software to 'factory' state.  It 
>>>> later
>>>>      became a more general software restore mechanism and software 
>>>> installa-
>>>>      tion helper application for various Apple computer products.  
>>>> ASR has
>>>>      been used in manufacturing processes and in shipping computers' 
>>>> System
>>>>      Software Installers.
>>>
>>> Since it's used at that level, it's clear that asr-based clones are, 
>>> indeed, bootable, especially with the help of bless.
>>>
>>> Now, if you're cloning a live system with changing data, you're 
>>> taking your chances - it may or may not boot depending on which files 
>>> change during the clone. That said, to date I've yet to have a 
>>> problem with it.
>>
>> What fun!
>>
>> The xserve doesn't like the install DVD. TheBoss thought it pretty 
>> funny when  I explained it to him. The xserve has a CD drive.
>>
>> It happens I have a laCie firewire CD burner or two around, I'll see 
>> next week ehether I can put a DVD-ROM drive in, we have a stack of 
>> those too.
>>
>> The other alternative is target mode. I have two official Apple 
>> documents here, and they differ as to which should be in target mode. 
>> Never mind, target mode only exposes one drive; on the xserve I need 
>> two for the preliminary backup. On the laptop (administration 
>> computer) it would need to export the DVD drive, and I don't think 
>> that will happen.
>>
>>
>> To clone the system, I booted to single-user mode. asr is being 
>> difficult.
>>
>> Since I've booted to single-user mode, no volumes (is this the right 
>> word? In Linux I'd say "partitions" or "filesystems") are mounted. 
>> Therefore pretty much all the examples of ars usage are irrelevant.
>>
>>
>> I have tried these
>>   asr -source  /dev/rdisk0 -target /dev/rdisk3 -erase
>>   asr -source /dev/disk0 -target /dev/disk3 -erase
>> and both forms complain
>> "Couldn't initialize disk arbitration - Cannot allocate memory" and 
>> some other messages.
>>
>> Google doesn't know. I don't know. I'm going home.
>>
>> I will be back
>>
>>
>> ps now it's booted to multi-user mode, I have a working asr command:
>> asr -source / -target /dev/disk3s3 -erase
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> MacOSX-admin mailing list
>> MacOSX-admin at omnigroup.com
>> http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
> 
>