System Image Utility fails to create boot image

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Level 1

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System Image Utility fails to create boot image

I am not able to successfully build a boot image with the System Image Utility. The build starts and runs for about 1 minute and then I get 100's of ditto messages saying "No space left on device". There's plenty of space left on the device. Eventually I get a GUI message stating the there was an error creating the image. The image is of course unusable. This only happens on a Boot image. I have no problem making an install image from the same source. Is it just me??

Xserve G5 Dual Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Mar 31, 2006 9:52 AM

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Answer 1

davidh

Level 4

1,896 points

Mar 31, 2006 1:56 PM in response to Ron Kelley

What OS & iteration please ? 10.3.9, 10.4.5 ?

What is the device/drive/computer you're trying to image ?

If you've connected your source computer via firewire, select the drive and "Get Info" and make sure that "Ignore Permissions" is NOT selected.

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Answer 2

Ron Kelley Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 11, 2006 11:45 AM in response to davidh

The OS level is 10.4.5

I'm trying to build a boot image from an older boot image, and also add a an upgrade package. I've tried creating the image with the additional package and without the package just to see if the package was causing the problem. The build didn't work either way. The odd thing is that I can build an install image from the same older boot image; install this new image on one of my workstations; run the upgrade package on the workstation successfully. Then I can firewire attach that workstation to my laptop and create a boot image, and store the boot image on the server. That's my workaround, but it seems very labor intensive and shouldn't be necessary.

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Answer 3

May 10, 2006 3:15 AM in response to Ron Kelley

I had simililar problems with much headscratching as the result.

I found that whenever I tried to create a boot image with System Image Utility (SIU) using an image file of my existing system as the source SIU would fail with the annoying "No space left on device" message everytime. I did a little investigating and found that SIU always created a 400 MB disk image file to copy to. So the error message was correct as my source was way over 4 GB.

I checked the manual and found the embarrasingly simple solution. It's not mentioned directly, rather it is stated that when you want to create an boot image from an existing system you should boot the machine containing the desired system on disk from an alternate source and the run SIU on that machine. The "trick" is that you're running SIU with the existing system mounted as a disk.

So I went back to my Xserve, mounted the image so it appeared on the desktop. Ran SIU and chose the mounted volume as the source instead of the image file, and hey presto!

MacBook Pro, Xserve, eMac, iMac... any Mac I can get my hands on Mac OS X (10.4.6)

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Answer 4

Ron Kelley Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 16, 2006 12:28 PM in response to Darth Andersen

Darth - Sorry I'm so long getting back to this. I tried creating the boot image with the source mounted on my server desktop. All appeared to go well; I didn't see anymore of the "No space left on the device" messages. However, the image was apparently abbreviated; it was only 5.3 GB while the previous boot image was 7+ GB. Also, the acid test was that I couldn't boot from it ... :o) Anyhow, I think we're getting there...... Regards

Xserve G5 Dual Mac OS X (10.4.5)

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