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MacMini Server 2011

I received a brand new MacMini server i7 4 core from the Singapore Apple store on 5th September.

I needed to reload the software as I had configuration issues with Radius, and felt safe using the internet restore function to restore the original software as Apple no longer supple recovery disks.

Unfortunately the internet restore function does not work on my machine as I get an error advising that 10.7 cannot be loaded on my machine.

I have spoken twice with Apple tech support in Sacremento, but although acknowledging my problem they are not responding with any offer of a fix except to take it to a service center to reload the operating system which is not an acceptable solution to me.

i appreciate advances in technology but this is crazy as the unit is not cheap and is sold without an effective restore function.

I hope this will not be a registered letter to Tim Cook....
 
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If I had not purchased lion and waited for this EFI update, would I have been able to get Lion for free... hmmmm... haven't seen the update for my 2011 17" yet though...

Has the update shown up for anyone under the Software Update? I'm not seeing it either.

and here i was, foolishly thinking that this meant apple was going to help me recover the wifi stability i had before "upgrading" to lion.

I have my fingers crossed that 10.7.2 is right around the corner with that fix. :)
 
Don't like the whole Lion thing.

Too much dependency on the internet always being 100%. Especially if you run into trouble...and the internet recovery thing is too slow, GB worth to download to re-install Lion?
Too much redundancy with 'Launchpad', like it was a giant iPad? For what purpose then, or bother, does the Dock still exist? Or Finder's 'Column' view? I tend to search for things alphabetically in 'column' view...like apps.
Looks like OS X is taking on a whole new vista with Lion?
whoops!
 
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I can see no reason why this option is not available on other prior year machines. This type of forced obsolecense that apple does is the number one thing that pisses me off about apple.
 
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I can see no reason why this option is not available on other prior year machines. This type of forced obsolecense that apple does is the number one thing that pisses me off about apple.

Easy—the machines of earlier years could not have enough storage (of firmware) for such a thing. :p But it could just be the type of thing that you stated.

Anyways, I installed this on my 2011 MBP 13. I wonder why this isn't found through software update (why is it through the site?) :confused:
 
I like Lion

Lion rocks for these features and the others. Just get used to them and you will be an happy guy.

I didn't like the natural scrolling at first. I turned it off instantly. Then as I used it more, with the way they have designed window animations for scrolling, etc...it just seemed better to use the natural scrolling so I turned it back on and after 3 days I was completely used to it. Now I think it rocks, I hated it at first, but gave it a chance and now I think it's the best thing ever. I did however turn off the resume features... I don't need my apps resuming when I restart. Other than that, lion rocks.
 
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I can see no reason why this option is not available on other prior year machines. This type of forced obsolecense that apple does is the number one thing that pisses me off about apple.

The earlier models presumably don't have enough storage to be able to boot the limited-os needed to download the Lion installer. Sort of like asking for air bags to be installed in your push mower.
 
Has anyone actually used this yet?

I was interested to see what it looked like. Booting with the option key no longer shows the recovery volume. I see the Macintosh HD partition / Drive and I see an option to login to a Wifi network. When I log into Wifi, nothing happens. I was assuming I would see a network attached recovery drive that could be selected and booted from.

When I boot using command + r, I boot the local recovery partition as expected. Within that utility, I see you can re-install Lion, but I am not sure if it is from a file contained on the local recovery volume or downloaded.

If the local HD died, and at the option key boot screen you had no disk, or you had a usb external attached you wanted to use the network recovery tool to install Lion, after logging onto wifi, it seems it should auto mount a recovery partition you can select to boot from. Has anyone else seen this and booted from it?

Also, my hard drive is file vault encrypted. The disk utility verify process shows some new interesting things. There does not appear to be an option to provide a password to mount the drive to do anything such as a repair.... I need to dig into this more... I just spent a few minutes poking around.
 
Am I missing something or just misunderstanding? The Lion recovery partition on my 2010 white MacBook always forced me to download Lion from the Internet before proceeding to recovery. That actually made me upset because I thought that the recovery partition already had Lion there and would just restore it when needed.

Is this something different?
 
This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection and includes fixes that resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance on MacBook Pro (early 2011) models.

FINALLY! Some movement on Apple's part:rolleyes::mad:
 
Easy—the machines of earlier years could not have enough storage (of firmware) for such a thing. :p But it could just be the type of thing that you stated.

Anyways, I installed this on my 2011 MBP 13. I wonder why this isn't found through software update (why is it through the site?) :confused:


It could be, but it is also just like Apple to give features to newest devices and slowly push the older devices out. They have a history of it, of course this is a minor issue, but still, typical Apple, support the newest only. Again no big deal, I made the USB recovery drive, but still bothers me.

Oh and thanks for the two negative reps, I forgot, Apple does no bad around here and anyone who posts a negative opinion of Apple is dinged by the silent fan boys, lol.
 
Well...

This sounds interesting, but I wouldn't trust it.

I feel quite secure with a

  • big external hard drive
  • partition 1, the same size as my internal drive, stores my "Super Duper" backup
  • partition 2, using the rest of the space on the ext drive, holds my time machine archives.

And I have one of these at home, and one at work.

It will take me a number of years before I trust my data and recovery to "the cloud". LOL
 
This sounds interesting, but I wouldn't trust it.

I feel quite secure with a

  • big external hard drive
  • partition 1, the same size as my internal drive, stores my "Super Duper" backup
  • partition 2, using the rest of the space on the ext drive, holds my time machine archives.

And I have one of these at home, and one at work.

It will take me a number of years before I trust my data and recovery to "the cloud". LOL


It is not data recovery, it is a way to get your OS installed over the internet in case of a new HDD due to a complete drive crash. So your HDD crashes, you have TC back ups, but no OS disks, recovery partition you can access and did not make the USB recovery drive, how do you get the OS installed so you can then recover your data??? This is what this function does, it is a BIOS function, on boot it can see no OS is installed so it goes out to the internet and downloads/installs your OS for you. Same as the USB drive is supposed to do. But this is better as it is part of the BIOS. Nothing to lose or carry around with you.
 
It is not data recovery, it is a way to get your OS installed over the internet in case of a new HDD due to a complete drive crash. So your HDD crashes, you have TC back ups, but no OS disks, recovery partition you can access and did not make the USB recovery drive, how do you get the OS installed so you can then recover your data??? This is what this function does, it is a BIOS function, on boot it can see no OS is installed so it goes out to the internet and downloads/installs your OS for you. Same as the USB drive is supposed to do. But this is better as it is part of the BIOS. Nothing to lose or carry around with you.

You need to look up what a "Super Duper" backup is.

I load in a fresh internal drive, BOOT UP OFF MY EXT SUPER DUPER BACKUP PARTITION, and simply restore it to my internal. If my SD backup is aged at all, I use the TM data.
 
Don't know what all the fuss is about.
I bought a new i7 Mini and replaced the HDD for a much better one before I event turned it on.
On starting for the first time held done CMD+r and the process started.
It was simple, quick and painless.
I for one don't have a problem with the new system at all. (but hey, I'm not a whinging bitch.)
 
Create Full Installation

Has anyone tried to create a Installation USB stick after doing the recovery? This update adds the ability to just insert a blank HDD and you're good to go. Till now if you wiped your HDD and wanted to reinstall Lion you had to have created the recovery stick (with said Apple tool).

I wanted to create one some time ago an just found thousands of guides to create the full install from the App Store version, but none to get it from a machine with Lion preinstalled.

To share the info, you also can get the InstallESD.dmg from the recovery process. Now all you need is an external disk or usb thumb drive. Before this update you additionally needed a recovery partition or working recovery stick.

  1. Use a Recovery Stick to boot
  2. or the new Interne Recovery to get your recovery partition running
  3. Select Install Lion, the Installer is now downloaded
  4. After the system reboots into the installer, stop it and open a Terminal
  5. At your HDD (i do not remember the exact spot) you'll find the InstallESD.dmg
  6. Attach your external storage and copy the image or shove it over the network to some place else
  7. To create the full installer, mount the image in Disk Utitlity and use it as a recovery source to a external HDD or thumb stick (4GB might be too small). If tried to do it with the unmounted image - as all the App Store tutorials state - and since it uses Block-Copy the Checksum test as the last recovery step failed all the time. Using the mounted volume on the other hand worked like a charm.
  8. Voila, a full Lion install volume.

Hope this is not old news :(

Greetings,
nomad
 
Wonder if doing this update would then prevent my mid-2011 MBP (which came with Snow Leopard) from ever booting with Snow Leopard again?

When Lion has a checkbox in a system pref to make it behave like Snow Leopard (no "auto-save", provide "save as..." instead of that dopey "duplicate", etc.), I'll think about it. I yanked it off my MBP about a month after installation as it just made me much less productive. Sorry, Apple: Lion sucks.

:jawdrop: you don't like autoversioning? ... You have an internet license, don't you.
 
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