How To: Installing Tiger sans DVD

[James Farnham]

Try this, i used this to install Tiger from an iPod on two different machines. First, use disk utility to completely format the ipod, so that there is nothing at all on it. Do not use itunes to set it up, keep it as it is blank.

Apple and I on it to bring up the info window, then uncheck "ignore ownership on this volume".

Now, fire up the terminal, and type:

sudo asr -source /pathtodmg -target /pathtoipod -noverify

to get the paths, just drag the .dmg and the ipod onto the window at those points.

Now press enter, stick in your password, and the ipod will be correctly imaged. Then run the installer from ipod.

:edit: crap, you may need to use -nocheck instead of noverify in some cases, it'll tell you if it wants t'other

 

[wPod]

it worked well, i used this with a fw drive and was able to load 10.4 on an old 500 mhz iBook that only had a CD rom. it works! using the fw drive was almost as fast as loading tiger onto my PB from the DVD.

 

[trainguy77]

I just downloaded the dmg from Mac's website (they posted it today for Student ADC members), and am having more or less the same problem, that of installing on a machine when there's no DVD. In fact, my PB has a DVD player, but I have no Mac that has a DVD burner, so I'm going to give it a shot this way.

I'll keep you guys posted.

Do you need to buy tiger if you download from the site?

Also how does it run on the imac 600? Is it better then 10.2? Maybe i should pick up a copy for my brother.

 

[adairje]

Installing Tiger on a G3 iBook

For what it's worth, I would like to share my own experience with installing Tiger on a G3 iBook with 800 MHz processor and a CD-ROM drive. I used FireWire Target Disk mode to do the job. Basically, I shut down the iBook, connected it to my G4 iMac flat-panel (which was already on) via a FireWire cable, and then hit the power button on the iBook while holding down the "T" key until the FireWire icon appeared. At that point, the iBook's hard drive appeared on the iMac's desktop just like it's supposed to work. It was kind of interesting just watching the FireWire icon bounce around the iBook's screen during the install, though.

After I had the computers connected to each other, I inserted my Tiger DVD, rebooted, and was able to install directly onto the iBook's hard drive. On completion, the iMac automatically booted up from the iBook's hard drive. When I was finished with the registration stuff, I simply reset the startup disk to my iMac's hard drive and rebooted. After the reboot, I simply dragged the iBook's hard drive icon to the trash and then pushed down the iBook's power button until it turned off. I was then able to reboot the iBook with Tiger.

Also, FWIW, I used the "archive and install" option on the iBook and it seemed to work well. I also repaired permissions before doing anything else on the iBook.

Hope this may be useful to someone else on this forum. I thank the previous posters very much because you saved me both time and possibly money - I was looking into buying either an external LaCie DVD burner or upgrading the CD-R drive to a DVD-RW using an update that is provided by MCE Technologies). No need to do that now.

 

[chatin]

Tiger upgrade headache on mac mini

I used the disk utility on the Tiger upgrade CD to erase my 80 gb mac mini drive only to find out that an 10.3 is required to be installed before upgrading!!

Now I can't get the upgrade disk out of the drive! The keyboard eject doesn't work. I will dig out a paper clip and try to find the hidden eject but am seriously considering returning the mini to Apple.

 

[trainguy77]

I used the disk utility on the Tiger upgrade CD to erase my 80 gb mac mini drive only to find out that an 10.3 is required to be installed before upgrading!!

Now I can't get the upgrade disk out of the drive! The keyboard eject doesn't work. I will dig out a paper clip and try to find the hidden eject but am seriously considering returning the mini to Apple.

Hold down the mouse when you boot up. It should kick the CD out.

 

[chatin]

Hold down the mouse when you boot up. It should kick the CD out.

That worked! Thank you so much!!

 

[kubark42]

I used the disk utility on the Tiger upgrade CD to erase my 80 gb mac mini drive only to find out that an 10.3 is required to be installed before upgrading!!

I seem to remember that when upgrading my roomie's Mini, the upgrade CD required Panther but let me do an Erase & Install nonetheless. You might try reinstalling Panther and then rebooting with the Tiger upgrade CD to see if it doesn't give you the option of Erase & Install.

 

[rwk001]

Using Target Disk Mode problem

Something weird happened to me installing Tiger on an older G4 Tower with only a CD-RW. After installing Tiger, my newer G5 rev B DP2.0 then came up with the screen from my old computer, and I couldn't eject the target disk! I tried eject my host computer HD and it disappeared! Aaaaah!!!

Turning off the Target computer simply made my new computer totally stall because it was acting as if the target HD was now its default HD. So I had to turn on my target computer back into Target mode, reboot my host computer which was using the Target HD as the default, then go to System Preferences and select my "old" host HD as the default drive, reboot, and voila! it worked as reported.

Apparently, the installation of Tiger had made the Target HD the default. Hope this helps the next person in case this happens to them.

 

[xgdfalcon]

Only own 1 Mac

Is there a solution when you only own 1 Mac and it doesn't have a DVD drive?

 

[kubark42]

Is there a solution when you only own 1 Mac and it doesn't have a DVD drive?

Not if you don't have somewhere, somehow another hard disk that the mac can recognize and mount on firewire. If you have a firewire external disc, for example.

Kenn

 

[MacRy]

Not if you don't have somewhere, somehow another hard disk that the mac can recognize and mount on firewire. If you have a firewire external disc, for example.

Kenn

I'm in the same position as this poster in so far as I don't have another Mac or external hard drive. I do have a USB DVD drive but it doesn't seem to work from that. Is there any way to make it use that drive? Alternatively is there a way to create my own set of cd's from the original disk image using toast or something?

 

[California]

Wait -- I need a dvd BURNER to install Tiger? Is this right? How about installing it then on my tibook 500 with only a cd/dvd rom drive? Sticking with Panther until then...

 

[zelmo]

Wait -- I need a dvd BURNER to install Tiger? Is this right? How about installing it then on my tibook 500 with only a cd/dvd rom drive? Sticking with Panther until then...

You don't need a burner, just a DVD drive to read the standard issue Tiger install DVD.

BTW, I just used this great tip to install Tiger onto a 700MHz iMac G4 that only had a CD-RW drive on it. Worked like a charm. I'll probably keep Tiger on my iPod and use it to install the other 15 Tiger licenses we have at work. Seemed pretty snappy.

 

[marleyg]

I tried creating a bootable Tiger install disk on a FireWird drive using the command:

sudo asr -source /pathtodmg -target /pathtoiFWDrive -noverify

The response was:

asr: did not copy blessed information to target, which may have missing or out-of-date blessed folder information.

I am running 10.4.2 on my G4 Mac. I used Disk Utility to create the dmg on a separate internal drive. I also unchecked "ignore ownership on this volume" in the Ifno window for the FireWire drive.

Any suggestions?

 

[trainguy77]

Have you tried doing a restore to the firewire drive from disk utility?

 

[marleyg]

Restore Tiger Install Image

I looked at Disk Utility, but don't see an option for Restore. The only reference I see to Restore in Disk Utility is: Scan Image for Restore.

I had previously created a disk image of the Tiger DVD on my 2nd internal HD, which I named TigerInstall. Clicking the Scan Image for Restore option gives the following error:

Unable to scan "TigerInstall.cdr" - Invalid argument.

Can you elaborate on how to get a properly formatted image of the Tiger Install DVD and restore it to a FireWire drive?

Marley

 

[trainguy77]

I have never tried this. I also run 10.3 so it might have changed:

When you select the drive to restore to it has a row of buttons at the top one says restore, the button is where it says first aid, and erase.

Hope this helps!

 

[marleyg]

Clone Tiger Install

Well, I think I have a working copy of the Tiger Install DVD on my FireWire drive now. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an image of the DVD on my internal HD and to prepare it for Restore using Apple Disk Utility. Then, using the Restore tab (as trainguy77 pointed out) I restored the disk image onto my FireWire drive. I double-clicked on the install icon & then clicked restart. I went through the restart procedure & up to the point where it would start to install. I stopped there, because I did not want to reinstall on my main system, but it looks like it would work.

Thanks trainguy77; I'll post if there is are problems with a real install.

Marley Graham

 

[kewyn15]

New Challenge

Hello People,

********How can I Install tiger on my iBook with what I've got?*********

iBook 600Mhz with firewire and networked to PC
PC - Dvd drive
Tiger Dvd
Tiger .dmg and .iso image
I can also get hold of an external firewire hard disk

I've burned an image of the dvd in .dmg from my PC and used my iBook OS X 10.1.5 to transfer it over using the network. BY THE WAY! The dvd is an original

Can someone work out something????

 

[webgurly]

Huge Problem

I'm going to kill my mac
I have external FW Dvdr because internal dvd broke. Using 10.2 and used Carbon Copy to copy os DVD to my ipod. I restarted my comp with ipod as startup disk. Then it was a big apple for a long time (more than 10 mins). I restarted it again but pressed option this time, got the startup disk options but this time there is an x icon instead of the apple picture. I'm at my wits end here..im a pc girl w/ big mac probs. Help!

 

[trainguy77]

Why don't you plug the FW DVD drive into the computer and try booting that way?

 

[webgurly]

Tried that

I tried booting from fw dvd drive, but it just goes into regular os x start up. I also did holding option key but fw drive didnt show up. I even changed my startup to the tiger disk in the fw dvd drive but still goes into os. Help!

 

[kcool]

Mounting through the network.

I've seen many posts concerning Apple's decision to ship Mac OS X 10.4 exclusively on DVD. While I understand that Apple has offered its customers a $10 exchange option to "downgrade" to CDs, I would like to post a second option for those more adventurous types. You can actually install Mac OS X Tiger from your iPod! What does this require?

1. Tiger install DVD
2. A friend's Mac with a DVD drive
3. An iPod with a firewire cable (not sure about USB2.0... haven't tested it).

I should also add that any external hard drive will also work for this. The data currently stored on the hard drive your your iPod will not be modified. Anyway, without further adieu, the steps:

1. Connect your iPod to a Mac with a DVD drive and ensure that you have enabled mounting of your iPod as a disk. You should also insert the Tiger DVD.
2. Launch Apple's Disk Utility applet, found in /Applications/Utilities/
3. Choose any disk listed on the left hand side and select the "Restore" tab.
4. Here you will see a "Source:" field and a "Destination:" field. On the left you should be able to find your iPod drive and your Tiger DVD. You want to drag the Tiger DVD to the "Source:" field and the iPod drive to the "Destination:" field.
5. Next click Restore. You need not check "Erase Destination" unless you just want to.

Once that process has completed, your iPod will be a fully bootable Tiger installation image. Simply plug your iPod into the system onto which you'd like to install Tiger, pull up the Startup Disk applet in the System Preferences, and the iPod will appear in the list of available start up volumes (assuming once again you have enabled mounting of your iPod as a hard drive). Select it, click restart and proceed with installation.

There are a few additional nuances and implications to this method. First of all, you can also use a disk image to restore your iPod. If you have trouble using the aforementioned methodology you can first generate an image of your install DVD, then mount that image and then use the mounted volume as the source.

Second, since most external hard drives, iPod included, are faster than most internal DVD-rom drives (my iBook's included), this method can greatly decrease the requisite install time (not taking into account the time invested preparing the volume). If you must install Tiger on multiple machines and would like to avoid the dangers of scuffing the disk or would like to decrease the wait time, this is also a viable option.

Lastly, and in my opinion most interestingly, this is a good method of making an install partition. Once you get the system to boot off the iPod (or external hard drive), if you have made a disk image of your install DVD you can easily use Apple's disk tools to format a small 3 gig-or-so partition and restore it with the install DVD's image. This way if in the future you need to do a fresh Tiger install, you can simply boot off of this partition and zap, new system in no time.

Alright... that's it. Hope this wasn't too confusing or too obvious. Happy Tiger'ing.

Hi everybody!!
Wanted to ask you guys a small query i had regarding your post. i have a mac (say A) without the dvd drive and a mac with a dvd drive (say B). i was planning the following:

1. create a image of the installation DVD in A
2. Create a small 3 GB partition in B.
3. restore this 3 GB partition with the install image from A over the network using AFP.

is this a viable option to install the OS. Am pretty new to macs, so am nt sure if this will work.

 

[igotworms]

Splitting the DVD Image and burn to cds?

I'm topping this sucker. Believe it.

I've got an old G3 powerbook (lombard, no dvd) that's desperate for Tiger. Because it's running OS 9, the ipod trick doesn't seem like it will work out.

A question: if I created an image on an OSX machine, edited that image's OSInstall.dist file like so, is there a tool out there that will split that image for me so I can burn to cd?

Seems like the best way to get Tiger on an OS 9 unsupported machine.