Preserving disk authorizations using Apple Software Restore.

[DieHard]

Mactron, I am so upset that you did not figure this one out 10 years ago, but I forgive you

The progress of this thread cannot be understated... I have tried many combinations of OS 9 3rd party utilities and images and never got 100% success (literally weeks, if not months, of trials and testing while doing setups for others); To use Apple's own ASR was so ingenious and yet so obvious.  I will be testing this scenario on 3 MDDs over the weekend and will try an MDD to QS test if I have time. 

My first test will be to image one of the MDDs that have an OWC SSD and restore to the first partition of a 500GB Western Digital that has 3 partitions.

This technique would have saved me literally hundreds of hours of reloads and will enable us to share things like LM4-mkII, groove agent, and other items.  This is a landmark breakthrough, I am feeling like a giddy schoolboy again

[IIO]

This technique would have saved me literally hundreds of hours of reloads and will enable us to share things like LM4-mkII, groove agent, and other items.

but will it work to add the content of the cloned partition to another partition? if not, you still have to install everything from your original CDs and save not anything.

oh and of course: it would be most useful to make it work with disc images .

[DieHard]

This cannot be used to "add" content, but would be useful for Fresh Volumes... and as a suggestion, you could make 4 or 5 volumes on a single drive and then tryout full images created by others...

I could make one that had 9.2.2, Cubase VST 5.1 , and included many authorized plugins.

[Syntho]

If there were a way to simply transfer an authorization instead of restoring the entire disk, that would be excellent...

What would the effect be of preserving a SCSI hard disk but restoring it on a SATA drive? Aren't there different drivers on the disk or something?

[Syntho]

Where can I get a copy of the Apple System Restore software?

[MacTron]

If there were a way to simply transfer an authorization instead of restoring the entire disk, that would be excellent...

What would the effect be of preserving a SCSI hard disk but restoring it on a SATA drive? Aren't there different drivers on the disk or something?

ASR mainly work at partition level.

Where can I get a copy of the Apple System Restore software?

In my FTP folder.

[IIO]

i´ve got a question in the same direction like syntho´s – i am too lazy to find it out myself - woundt it work to create a small partition and then copy the content of a small disc image file from someone else onto this volume? if i am not overlooking something, this should work with the 3 major copy protection schemes in question. or?

[Syntho]

Upon further thought, I'm not sure this would work. The disk authorizer most likely authorizes all partitions that your boot HD has and all the partitions are probably activated automatically as it's authorized. If you transfer just a single partition to another partition, I can only see just that partition being authorized, and since it's not the 'boot' drive, it probably won't work.

The other, longer method is to authorize your main boot drive, image it, then copy it over to another boot drive, but the problem with that is you'll have to resize/expand the partition size which was hard to do on Macs as far as I can remember. Unless the Apple Restore Software will restore a partition but not fool with the partition size when doing it...

[IIO]

resize/expand the partition size which was hard to do on Macs as far as I can remember.

thats true. it is theoretically possible, but myself i would be afraid of repartitioning disks which are full of important data, no matter what the manual says.

[MacTron]

i´ve got a question in the same direction like syntho´s – i am too lazy to find it out myself - woundt it work to create a small partition and then copy the content of a small disc image file from someone else onto this volume?

Restoring to a partition bigger than the original partition it's Ok.
In one of my test an original 2GB partitions wa successfully restored to a 90 GB partition, preserving the authorizations.
This method allows sharing a disk Image, preserving *all* the authorizations of the original with any one you wish...

*all*: we really don't know for sure if this work for all. We only know for sure the few test I have done.

if i am not overlooking something, this should work with the 3 major copy protection schemes in question. or?

3 major copy protection schemes ¿?

This ASR method mainly work with schemes based on file/folder IDs (vRefNum).

[MacTron]

Upon further thought, I'm not sure this would work. The disk authorizer most likely authorizes all partitions that your boot HD has and all the partitions are probably activated automatically as it's authorized. If you transfer just a single partition to another partition, I can only see just that partition being authorized, and since it's not the 'boot' drive, it probably won't work.

... what really is authorized is the WHOLE disk, because the authorization data is written out of any user partition. May be ASR can work with whole devices, including partition schemes, but this is unexplored territory... and we still need to solve the Checksum issue...

[Syntho]

As far as Unisyn, it doesn't seem to be a disk authorization issue. It's just a lack of SCSI issue.

[supernova777]

As far as Unisyn, it doesn't seem to be a disk authorization issue. It's just a lack of SCSI issue.

its probably just how its coded... they probably thought scsi would always be on powermacs
when it was made or didnt think there would be a crazy guy named syntho 20 years into the future messin with it

[IIO]

3 major copy protection schemes ¿?

This ASR method mainly work with schemes based on file/folder IDs (vRefNum).

plus, of course, any copy protection scheme which does nothing more but writing regular files onto disk.

ah, i have still not tried reinstalling a steinberg/waldorf product from disc image (i first have to make the disc image files). i own most of them legally, but have CD-free versions installed for half of them, and as always, one always tends to underrate the usefulness of things one dont ned personally.

please go on, this is an interesting project and might be a useful part of the future "final everything by one click" we´re working on.

[arjen_1]

We only need 3 things: Apple Disk Copy, Apple Software Restore (ASR) and ASR script.

1- Make a Apple Disk Copy Image file of the original hard disk.
2- Apply ASR script to the image file with Disk Copy.
3- Place the image file inside the same folder as ASR App.
4- Start Apple Software Restore his options are really straightforward:

Can you explain step 2; How do I apply the script? I've been trying to achieve this for so many years. I don't want to think about the hours, nights and days this could have saved me. LOL 

[MacTron]

2- Apply ASR script to the image file with Disk Copy.

Can you explain step 2; How do I apply the script? I've been trying to achieve this for so many years. I don't want to think about the hours, nights and days this could have saved me. LOL 

OK.
This is the more complex point:
Apple Disk Copy can write the correct checksum to a image file. But ASR don't work with this checksum, ¿? it need that the checksum of the image file to be placed into a resource named cSum. This can be done with an Apple Script that can be launched Inside Apple Disk Copy and is called: "Scan Image for ASR".

The worst thing is that even Apple Disk Copy and ASR can work with big image files (over 2 GB) this script don't work with those big disk image files...

[SonikArchitects]

So guys, if this works, you guys know you've found literally the Holy Grail. (And I have wasted several hundred hours of my life, but that's in the past).

WHERE CAN I GET : Scan Image for ASR??
_BT

[supernova777]

BT dont get too excited yet
we still have some limitations to overcome
particularly the 2gb limit of this "checksum bug" error involved with making + restoring the images

but also keep in mind that mactron is persuing, as usual 100% only mac os 9 technology to accomplish this
i have had success with using super duper + carbon copy cloner on my mdd and preserving auths..
and i had some failure aswell, an observation i made was that the success came when using a drive with only 1 partition
and my failure came with the mac os 9 being on the 2nd partition into the drive... but this may not be the true cause of the failure
just an observation, mactron has had success with multiple partitions but thats using his 2gb limited method

like it was discussed, the protection of the authorizations can be made in a multitude of ways:
-possibly specific to motherboard id codes
-possibly specific to hard drive "brand" "size" "manufacturer"
-possibly specific to powermac "breed" ie sawtooth vs quicksilver vs mdd
-possibly specific to cpu type
-possibly a combination of all 4 of the above..

different auths may have different combinations..
and it would take a team of specialists time + Effort to document which plugs use which auth scheme
perhaps this is somehting we could all accomplish if we all tested different plugs ability to preserve auths
and we could come up with a list of which plugs use which auth methods
this would be alot easier to do if we had some volunteers and we made a list and delegated 4-5 plugs to each
person to test + report back

another thing that is yet to be tested but was suggested by diehard was "retrospect" for mac os 9


also remember that this topic begain in a previous thread which came before this one
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=1223.0
so if this topic is of interest to u.. please review this thread aswell

[MacTron]

WHERE CAN I GET : Scan Image for ASR??
_BT

You can find it in a folder named ASR in my FTP folder.

[supernova777]

Apple Disk Copy can write the correct checksum to a image file. But ASR don't work with this checksum, ¿? it need that the checksum of the image file to be placed into a resource named cSum. This can be done with an Apple Script that can be launched Inside Apple Disk Copy and is called: "Scan Image for ASR".

The worst thing is that even Apple Disk Copy and ASR can work with big image files (over 2 GB) this script don't work with those big disk image files...

he meant to say that the unfortunate thing is that the reason (need) for the script is to avoid an error of some sort (checksum)
and that disk copy supports images larger then 2gb but the script doesnt work for these larger then 2gb size images. and will cause the error (cheksum error)
so this technique is limited to 2gb which severly limits what u can do with it.

having explained that... its my suspicion that there might be way to use ASR to restore an image made by other means (ie: ccc, superduper) which in effect would be 1/2 of my approach vs half of mactrons approach