Wednesday, October 24, 2012

How to instal Remote disc on an older mac

If like me you have an old Macbook pro and the optical drive has decided to lay down and die, then it's a bit of a problem upgrading the OS if you don't have the App Store.

I wanted to upgrade to Mountain Lion but the version was pre-Snow Leopard (I should have noted the version as I'm writing about it!).

Trouble is, to get from ye-olde version to Mountian Lion I needed to get the App Store, and to do that I need Snow Leopard, which comes on a DVD and will then let me get to the App store. Easy.

I needed to place the Snow Leopard DVD into the drive on my iMac (Mountain Lion), share the DVD drive by selecting Sharing in System Properties.

Then, I needed Remote disc on the old Macbook Pro. Problem is, it's only on newer kit. Well actually it's not. It's actually there, I just needed to configure it.

Open terminal on the Macbook and type:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
then

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true
Then restart the Macbook and in the Finder's sidebar there will be a disc icon. Click on it and off you go.

You can install from there. Fantastic I thought.

I went into System Preferences, Energy Saving, on both computers and set the computers not to go to sleep.

Installing across wifi took 3.5 hours then failed.

I tried again. It failed after the remote drive became unavailable.

I got a router and two cables and networked them together so it would be quicker but now the macbook tells me the HD is damaged.

I ran disk utility on it all it says it's fine so the media is ok.

Pooh.

Remote Disc was working, but I couldn't upgrade the OS with it.

In the end I,
1. Created an ISO of Snow Leopard
2. Formatted a memory stick (journaled)
3. Put the ISO on the stick and installed from there.

It worked - not entirely though. An issue with Spotlight remains that I haven't had time to resolve.
Oh - and my only Macbook is too old for Mountain Lion, or Lion. :)

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