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 PSU Blast Image Config - 2.7.0b1admin tool: restore system disk images |
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Product Description:
- Excellent alternative to NetRestore and other ASR tools
- One of the fastest ASR disk image restore tools available
- Quickly restore a Mac OS X system disk image to a Macintosh's boot hard disk (via Apple's asr command line tool)
- Automatically set the Open Firmware/EFI boot security mode and password:
- Prevent users booting with another volume (CD, DVD, FireWire Hard Disk) without supplying a password
- Prevent users from entering "Single User Mode", which gives "root" access to the Mac
- Change the network settings on the restored HD, if configured to do so
- Set the Open Firmware/EFI boot device to the restored disk
- Restore system images over the network via http/afp
- Extensible through pre and post restore scripts
- Specify default and autorun settings via a preference file
- Used by many Universities and Enterprise Companies
What's new in this version:
- NEW: Now Universal! The BIC executable is now 100% universal and runs natively on Intel and PowerPC Macs. Note that since BIC has always been a GUI wrapper for many command line tools, which have been universal in Mac OS X since the Intel Macs first shipped, you probably will only notice a speed up in the launch speed and drawing of the user interface. The 'asr' command line tool that restores the selected disk image to the selected disk has been universal for quite some time, so, again, the only real speed ups you'll see are in the initial launching of PSU BIC and the drawing of the UI. But running natively is still a good thing!
- NEW: Via a setting in the autorun preferences, you can now exclude other partitions that are on the same physical disk as the booted volume from showing up in the 'Disk To Restore' popup menu. Why would you want to do this? This is useful for when you have an external firewire build disk that has two or more partitions. In order to build both PowerPC and Intel based Macs, we have installed the PowerPC version of Mac OS X 10.4 on one partition, and the Intel version of Mac OS X on the other partition. When a PowerPC (G3, G4, G5) Mac is booted with the firewire disk, the other partition that has the Intel build of Mac OS X would show up as a writable disk and could be selected in the BIC "Disk To Restore" menu. I needed to prevent our staff from accidentally selecting this other volume, as well as preventing BIC from accidentally erasing it when autorunning. Yes, users can still erase the partition if they use Disk Utility, but I'm only concerned about the control within BIC. Add the "EXCLUDE_BOOT_DISK_VOLUMES" key to the auto-run preferences and set it to "YES" to enable this feature. Note that you can partition the firewire disk as "Apple Partition Map" and the Intel Mac CAN boot from it just fine, even though Disk Utility implies that you must use the "GUI" partition scheme for booting Intel Macs.
- NEW: The output of the pre and post restore scripts can now be logged to the run log file. To enable this feature for the pre restore script, add the "LOG_PRE_RESTORE_SCRIPT_OUTPUT" key to the auto-run preferences with the value set to "YES".To enable this feature for the post restore script, add the "LOG_POST_RESTORE_SCRIPT_OUTPUT" key to the auto-run preferences with the value set to "YES".
- NEW: The network preferences file on the restored disk can now be erased before a new one is created, if desired. BIC normally only modifies the existing network preferences file on the restored disk. Sometimes the networking will work better though if the network preferences are first deleted and then recreated with all new fresh entries for the available network interfaces. To enable this feature, add the "CREATE_NEW_NETWORK_PREFS_FILE" key to the auto-run preferences with the value set to "YES".
- NEW: More robust network preferences configuration. When modifying the network settings, I'm now doing more checking if there's already a network location named "Automatic" and if so, deleting it so that the new location that gets created can have the same name and be properly populated with the network interfaces.
- NEW: Updated error checking for command line tool exit values for REALbasic 2007. The updated REALbasic frameworks started returning the true exit value of shell commands versus multiply it by 8, so I had to update all of the checks for the exit values of shell commands, which there are many. I also changed my code to 'mod' the exit value with 256 versus dividing it.
- FIXED: A crash when autorunning. When autorunning, there was a rare case where there was a reference to an object on the Firmware Security dialog window after it had already been closed which caused BIC to crash. This has been fixed.
- KNOWN ISSUE: BIC might crash 1 launch out of 10 on Intel Macs when autorunning. I'm not yet able to replicate this problem 100% of the time, but I'm looking into it. If you run into this problem, please contact me and send along the run log file.
- I'm back to using beta numbers for now. I expect to make many more changes for this 2.7 release and, rather waiting longer to get this universal version out, I decided to release it. I'm working on updating a lot of BIC for version 3.0 with a new user interface and other enhancements for a later date.
Operating System Requirements:
This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:
- Mac OS X 10.4 Intel
- Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
- Mac OS X 10.3.9
- Mac OS X 10.3
- Mac OS X 10.2
Additional Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.2.2 or higher (Universal)
- Must be logged in with an administrator account to run PSU Blast Image Config.
- If you desire Open Firmware security, the Macintosh computer to clone to must be capable of supporting it. Note that Open Firmware security settings are machine specific and not stored on the hard disk. All Intel Macs have EFI firmware security and are supported.
- ncutil MUST be installed if you wish to be able to configure the network settings on the restored disk. When running BIC under Mac OS X 10.4, it's strongly recommended that you download ncutil 3.1.1 ONLY - not version 3.1.2 as it has a bug deleting network locations (and a bug report has been filed on it). Please note that ncutil version 2.1.2 supports Mac OS X 10.3.9 and earlier.
Screenshots:
Download Links:
Download PSU Blast Image Config Now (File Size: 6.0M)
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Featured Reviews
Great Product 
- Version: 2.5b1, 7/19/2005 10:57AM PST
(1 of 1 users found this comment useful)
Rhon_Fitzwater_662 (FitzwaterInc)
If you have 1 or many mac os machines that you need to image, I would recommend giving PSU Blast Image Cofig a try. Its easy to configure, faster then other applications, and free.
The developer does not ignore feedback, so if you find a problem or have a suggestion, you will most likely see if fixed in the next revision.
Keep up the great development of this product as I see myself using it for a while to come.