Remotely install OSX on an iMac?

By Si_
in Apple (macOS)

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pdmcmahon

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Posted
  Si_ said:
I have an imac with a broken superdrive. I notice I can remotely install osx from another mac, but it appears to only be for the Air? Would it be possible to remotely install onto an imac?

thanks

So, granted, I am a cheap ass, but I would just buy an external DVD drive, load your OS and then return the drive and say it didn't work with your iMac G3 which only has USB 1.1 :)

Grand Master

Eric Veteran

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Posted

There is a "Remote Install" feature built into Leopard as well. You can even do a remote install from Windows by running it from the OSX install disc apparently. It's looks like it's only supported on the Air and 2009 Mini though.

Instructions are here for anyone that's interested.

@OP: "C" is for CD-ROM boot. Option is supposed to give you the available startup disks.

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Phantom Helix

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I tried doing that running the instal from my iMac to my Macbook when testing the WWDC snow leopard, and it didnt work,

i am not sure but i think the OS X install dvd's that come with the air include function to to catch the remote install coming from another computer,

i doubt very much install dvd's for other mac's even have the code installed to make it work and even if you used a full retail DVD im sure the installer will not include it on anything other than an AIR

and i believe the bootup option you were looking for is holding "N"

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Phantom Helix

Posted
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  AltecXP said:
Then why would that remote installer for a PC be on my 13.3 MacBook if it only work on the Air? that's stupid.

The remote installer only acts as the server over the network, to use that PC as the "Disc Drive" for the Air.

i dont know maybe i did not do it correctly but i search apple support pages and could not find away to use it with anything other than an AIR

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Phantom Helix

Posted
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  Medfordite said:
I am going to try that sometime, I have a spare thumb drive laying around, wouldn't it be faster though from an external hard drive plugged in though?

Yes it would but not by not much, i restored the WWDC snow leopard .dmg to a 32gb PNy thumb drive and it took 12 minutes to install it on my iMac (from clicking the final install button, to the installer saying the install was complete and it was going to reboot)

i also restored it to my WD 320gb passport and it was only 2 minutes faster.

i did not time the actual DVD install but im pretty sure it was the slowest

Grand Master

.Neo

Posted
Posted (edited)

It should work with every Mac, not just the MacBook Air. Both via AirPort or Ethernet. Wild guess is that it might not work between an Intel and PPC Mac.

picture1ged.png

Edit I just found out that the Remote Install Mac OS X application won't recognize any PPC Install DVDs such as Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and 10.4 Tiger. The only logical conclusion I can come up with is that the Open Firmware of a PPC Mac simply doesn't support this feature.

Edited by .Neo
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Phantom Helix

Posted
Posted (edited)
  .Neo said:
It should work with every Mac, not just the MacBook Air. Both via AirPort or Ethernet. Wild guess is that it might not work between an Intel and PPC Mac.

*snipped*

Edit I just found out that the Remote Install Mac OS X application won't recognize any PPC Install DVDs such as Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and 10.4 Tiger. The only logical conclusion I can come up with is that the Open Firmware of a PPC Mac simply doesn't support this feature.

Try it i did everything i could think of to get the remote system to recognize the installer from my iMac to my macbook but it would not give me the network dropdown menu that the instructions say it should during boot time.

Both my iMac and Macbook are Intell and i even tried putting the OS X disc that came with the Macbook in my iMac and still nothing.

if you can get it to work on Any Mac could you please make a step by step tut?

below is the screen i can not get to showup on the remote Macbook

post-24918-1246076344.png

Edited by Phantom Helix
Grand Master

.Neo

Posted
Posted

Are you sure your iMac has the latest EFI Firmware installed? I know Apple released quite a few updates for different Macs in the recent years. Maybe I'm completely wrong here and the feature only works with the MacBook Air and latest Mac mini.

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Phantom Helix

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Posted

Yes it does, this is an early 2009 iMac built in febuary, it came pre-installed with 10.5.6, it is now 10.5.7 and a week or two ago they just released an EFI update, it was mainly to address ATI GPU issues tho, mine has Nvidia.

i cant reverse it either and go from putting the disk in my MacBook and trying to install on the iMac it does not work and i cant find out why, nothing in apple support/forums and i got to page 136 on google before i gave up lol

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Phantom Helix

Posted
Posted

well i tried that and it did not work for me, it did enable the disc to show up in finder when the macbook was booted, but not during boot time like the remote install requires, if the system your trying to install OS onto doesn't currently have a functioning OS like if you bought a brand new HDD then this just wont work on anything but the AIR

Grand Master

zhangm Supervisor

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  • Supervisor
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Couple things to try:

Install from another Mac via TDM:

http://macamour.com/blog/2007/11/07/instal...rget-disk-mode/

Install from another Mac via TDM/Disk Util:

Make a fresh installation on some other machine or partition and image it. Then image the destination Mac over Firewire with Disk Utility.

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