Using DeployStudio and Winclone Pro to Image a Lab of Dual-Boot Macs

You can use DeployStudio (DSS) to restore an OS X image and then restore a Winclone image to a remote Mac.

This guide assumes:

• You have a copy of Winclone Pro version 4.0 or greater
• You prepared your Windows operating system
• You used "Image Volume" (with Winclone or Winclone Pro) to create an image of your Windows volume
• You installed the DeployStudio service, v1.6 or later
• You created a DeployStudio NetBoot runtime set that is valid for your Mac
• Your OS X volume does not contain a Winclone image

You'll need to use DeployStudio 1.6.1 or later. Earlier versions do not take advantage of Winclone Pro's self-extraction features.

One way to check your DeployStudio version is to open System Preferences, then select DeployStudio. .

Create the image of your OS X volume. It is most simple to use the default DeployStudio workflow named "Create a master from a volume". This automatically places the image of the OS X volume in your DeployStudio repository's Masters/HFS folder. If you create your OS X volume with a different tool, be sure to place the .dmg in the folder just cited.

Note: It is possible to store your Winclone image on the image of your OS X volume, then use a post-restore script to use the Winclone winclone_helper_tool to restore the Winclone image to the Windows volume. There are three disadvantages to this method:

1. The OS X image will be unnecessarily large if you want to use it for non-dual-boot Macs.
2. If you need to make a change on the OS X master, it will take longer to recreate an image from it because the new image will contain the Winclone image.
3. If you need to make a change on the Windows master, you need to use Winclone to recreate the Windows image, copy it to the OS X master, then re-create the OS X master image.

Use Winclone 4 to create an image of your Windows volume (Windows XP on NTFS, Windows 7, or Windows Vista). See the Winclone 4 page for more information.

Open Winclone Pro and select your Winclone image in the Winclone window sidebar. If your Winclone image isn't already in the sidebar, you can drag it there from the Finder.

From the Tools menu, choose "Make Self Extracting". This creates a winclone_helper_tool that you can later use to extract the image. This means that you don't need to install Winclone on the remote Mac.

At the "Make Self Extracting" window, click Copy.

After a brief moment, you see the Completed window. Click OK.

Verify that Winclone Pro actually created the winclone_helper_tool. In the Finder, Right-click (or Control-click) your Winclone image, and choose "Show Package Contents".

You will see a new folder in the Finder. In this folder, confirm that the item "winclone_helper_tool" exists.

You can close this Finder window.

Copy the Winclone image to [DeployStudio Repository]/Masters/NTFS.

Note that if Winclone is not installed on the computer running the DeployStudio service, the Winclone image appears as a regular folder, instead of a Winclone icon. That's expected.

1. Click Workflows in the DepoyStudio Admin window sidebar.
2. Click Add (+) under the list of workflows.

1. Double-click the default text of new workflow item to change its name. You must click above the workflow name in order to edit it.
2. Enter an appropriate name, such as "Restore Dual Boot".
3. Press Return to save the name change.

Select your new workflow item again, because DeployStudio Admin re-orders the workflow items alpabetically.

DeployStudio offers several ways to configure its database of information about Macs, including importing CSV files. However, if you don't yet have names assigned to Macs, you can name them as part of the imaging process; with this task, you assign the computer a name after it boots into the DeployStudio runtime, and then you continue to image the Mac.

1. Click Add (+) next to the "Drop tasks here" area. This opens a drawer with tasks.
2. Drag the "Hostname form" task to the "Drop tasks here" area (the "workflow timeline").

Note that whenver you click Save, the first step of the workflow is automatically selected.

Drag the Partition task from the tasks drawer into the workflow timeline, to the right of the existing task.

1. Set the Target volume. If your Mac has only one disk, this is easy; choose "First disk available".
2. Click the "Apply layout template" pop-up menu and choose Mac OS X + Windows.

1. Drag the slider between the MACOSX and the WINDOWS volume to modify how much space each volume occupies.
2. Enable the checkbox "Automate".

Note: Don't bother changing the names MACOSX and WINDOWS, because these are only temporary names, and other tasks refer to these names; keep it simple and stick with the defaults.

Drag the Restore task from the tasks drawer into the workflow timeline, to the right of the existing tasks.

Click the pop-up menu for Target volume, choose "Enter value" and enter "MACOSX" in the value field.

Note that this isn't the final volume name for your OS X volume, because restoring an image changes the volume name to whatever the volume name is for the image.

1. Click the Image pop-up menu, and choose HFS.
2. Click the arrow next to the Image text field to display the pop-up menu.
3. Choose the appropriate image to restore for the OS X volume.

Note that if you don't see the image you expect, to double-check your DeployStudio repository folder's Masters/HFS folder.

1. Enable the checkbox "Erase target for block copy restoration".
2. Enable the checkbox "Automate".

Configure the other options as appropriate for your environment. For Lion computers, be sure to enable "Restore system recovery partiions".

This step changes the Mac's computer name based on the information that DeployStudio has in its database. Note: you can observe the information in the DeployStudio database by selecting "Computers" in the DeployStudio Admin window sidebar.

Drag the Configure task from the tasks drawer into the workflow timeline, to the right of the existing tasks.

1. Leave the Target volume set tp "Previous task target", (which is the OS X volume).
2. Enable the checkbox "Rename computer".
3. Enable the checkbox "Automate".
4. Enable other checkboxes as appropriate for your environment.

Drag the Restore task from the tasks drawer into the workflow timeline, to the right of the existing tasks.

1. Click the pop-up menu for Target volume and choose "Enter value".
2. Enter "WINDOWS" in the value field.

Note that this isn't the final volume name for your OS X volume, because restoring an image changes the volume name to whatever the volume name is for the image.

1. Click the Image pop-up menu, and choose NTFS (even though the target volume is temporarily formatted FAT).
2. Click the arrow next to the Image text field to display the pop-up menu.
3. Choose the appropriate image to restore for the Windows volume.

Note that if you don't see the image you expect, to double-check your DeployStudio repository folder's Masters/NTFS folder.

1. Ignore the checkboxes listed under the "HFS only options" section.
2. Ignore the "Expand restored NTFS volume" checkbox; this is not necessary with Winclone images.
3. Enable the "Set as default startup volume" checkbox if you want to boot into Windows instead of Mac.
4. Enable the "Automate" checkbox.

Note that unless you want to forever reboot into the DeployStudio runtime, you must enable that checkbox for either the OS X restore task, or the Windows restore task.

This task automatically runs the following command, while still running in the DeployStudio runtime. In this example, the name of the Winclone image is Win7.winclone, and the disk with the Windows volume is /dev/disk0s4.

/tmp/DSNetworkRepository/Masters/NTFS/Win7.winclone/winclone_helper_tool --self-extract -p /dev/disk0s4

Click Save.

Note that any Macs already running the NetBoot DeployStudio runtime must reboot to see changes to the workflow.
 

You can use DeployStudio Admin to create a computer group, assign it as the "Default group", and configure a workflow to "Start workflow automatically". This way you can skip the step of choosing the workflow on the DeployStudio runtime client.

Use whatever methods you normally use to boot your Macs into the NetBoot DeployStudio runtime. Some people walk around holding the N key; others use Apple Remote Desktop to specify a NetBoot server.

1. Choose the new workflow item you just created. In this example, it is named "Dual Boot Restore".
2. Click Play.

On each Mac, assign the computer the appropriate names, then click Play to move on to the rest of the tasks.

This may take a while. At the top of the DeployStudio Runtime window, note that there are five sections in the workflow progress area; each workflow step gets its own section. In the figure below, 10:37 indicates that the entire workflow so far has taken 10 minutes and 37 seconds, and is estimated to take 10:41 (10 minutes and 41 seconds) to complete the current task.

Once the imaging has completed, the Mac will automatically reboot into whatever volume you specified. Depending on how you configured each image master, you may need to boot into each volume's OS to allow various tasks to run.

You can use DeployStudio to prepare a lab full of Macs by creating a DeployStudio workflow that performs the following tasks:

1. Erase the Mac's disk, create two partitions, one for OS X, and one for Windows;
2. Restore the OS X volume;
3. Restore the Windows volume

This document walks you through a sample workflow, but you can modify the workflow, and the settings for each task in the workflow, to meet your own needs.