Hacking the Mac OS X Installer DVD

I work at a university and we regularly get lots of new computers in that need to be imaged. Normally, people use a NetBoot server with NetRestore to do this, but our network is too clunky and poorly-designed to able to handle network-based imaging. So I have to resort to different methods of distributing our customized ASR images. For instance, we have one image for people in the Illustration Dept, but a very different one for workers who do not work in our design departments.

Last year, I was able to use Charles Sruska's excellent BootCD to build a bootable DVD that could then be used to image the workstations as needed. The ASR image is simply stored on the extra space on the root of the DVD, and NetRestore would let techs image from the ASR image to the internal HD of the Mac. It was fairly close to a "double-click" install for my techs: Boot from DVD, run NetRestore, restart the computer.

BootCD works well with Panther but has not been updated to work in Tiger. I'm sure Charles is working on it, but it's not done yet and I had to create a different solution, so I started hacking the Mac OS X Installer DVD. For the PPC machines, I used a copy of the recent Mac OS X 10.4.6 Retail DVD that was shipped to ACN members. It is a universal DVD that will boot any Tiger-compatible PPC-based Mac. Quite simply, this is how I did it: