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Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Euan Williams
While a lucky few have unlimited broadband and fast connections, people should remember that the Lion installer, when it becomes available from the appstore will, according to gold master recipients, wipe itself off your drive after Lion has been installed.

Yes, it is supposed to leave a 'restore' version on a separate partition -- automatically, and this can presumably be cloned, and Yes, you can always download it again 'for free', but it may be wiser to use one or other known method to save the installer file to DVD and/or flash drive first. These methods are simple and easily followed.

Look under "The Roar of Lion" topic.

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Mark Ford
Thank you for the title but please could you re-post the appropriate part here please Euan?
I am a slow reader and there is lots of stuff in that post!

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Euan Williams
Confirmation. Lion installer DOES self-delete after installation, but ONLY if the installer is in the applications folder of the disc or partition you are installing onto.

It is useful to make a backup copy if only to save long download times and possible ISP data restrictions.

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Peter Shepheard
I have downloaded Lion on my iMac but not yet installed it. I would rather be embarrassed by asking simplistic questions now than making silly mistakes and regretting it afterwards. So here goes:

1) In addition to UnstallESD.dmg I have several other folders and files in my Contents Folder. If I only need to burn InstallESD.dmg to DVD in order to install Lion on my Macbook and my Wife's Mac Mini as well as my iMac what are all these other Folders and Files for? Don't I need to copy them to my MacBook and Mini? I am NOT asking for a detailed explanation of what they all do just a general idea!

2) When I eventually decide to install Lion on my iMac do I use InstallESD.dmg or OSInstall.mpkg or Install Mac OS X Lion which appears under the MacOS Folder?

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Euan Williams
Over the weekend in the interests of research I tried installing Lion direct onto a clean partition (with no Snow Leopard, nor SL clone). This was the great hope of on-line prognosticators and anyone without a Snow Leopard install DVD.

It didn’t work. Installing SL seems to be required even if you have already somehow successfully downloaded Lion licensed with your Apple ID from the appstore.

In the end, just for the hell of it, I installed SL on a re-cleaned partition, used software update to update to the latest version, then software update again to update the updates. Next, re-established the network settings to get the wifi working, and installed Lion with the standard Lion installer on top of the SL install; finally revisiting software update a third time for a final pair of updates. Now, about the virtues of cloning…

Peter:
keeping it simple -- as my tutor Mark Ford would recommend ;-)

1. use “Install Mac OS X Lion” to install on top of Snow Leopard (see above).

2. only examine the contents of the standard Lion installer if you want to burn an installer to DVD or a Flash drive. In that case burn “InstallESD.dmg” to the DVD/Flash drive.

Personally I made a copy of the standard installer to an external drive since using it on the drive you are trying to update (as you would if updating an SL installation on your hard drive’s single partition) means that it will self-delete after the installation has been done (see post above).

3. If you do burn to DVD or Flash your DVD will show the following files:
“Install Mac OS X Lion” -- “Library” -- “MacOSX_Media_Background.png” -- “Packages” -- “private” -- “System”. Note that the folder “private” contains the folder “etc”, these are both standard Unix folder names, and are normally hidden in OSX with their brethren, turning up when you use carbon copy cloner for example.

4. Maybe one of the other files relates to the appstore and your Mac ID, but I don’t know -- and you have asked not to know (phew!). So there you have it, strictly according to the KISS principle.

Hope this helps, Lion is great, enjoy soon!

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Lionel Ogden
Apple goes to a lot of trouble to make things simple. This is what we always explain to newbies. But then we go out of our way to make it complicated. Has anyone had a simple upgrade to Lion?. Please let us know.

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Derek Wright
Yes - I downloaded the product from the Ap store, copied it into another directory from the Application directory and also copied it to the other two machines into their Download directory and then executed the install.

At the end of the install it only deletes the copy from the Application directory

I then installed it on the second machine I am holding off on the third machine as it is not under my control, so I need to know all the tricks and tips before I let it loose on that machine.

Apart from the loss of colour in the GUI no probs apart from a plugged in but not powered up DVI to ADC Adapter causing chaos. However after sleeping on the problem I realised that my machine was different from the norm and also had read a lot of comments about multi screen related issues.

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Peter Shepheard
I kept it simple Lionel! I don't know how to do complicated.

I downloaded Lion to my iMac. I opened the package as instructed and burned InstallESD.dmg to a DVD.

I deleted all the files from a Seagate FreeAgent GO portable drive and used Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate the MacintoshHD drive on my MacBook. Never used it before but it was straightforward.

Shut down and rebooted the MacBook holding down the Option/Alt key. As per Euan's tip on Tuesday last week. This allowed me to select which drive to boot from.

I chose the GO drive and it booted from there with no problems.

I then looked at the DVD contents and without thinking I clicked on the picture of the Lions head to install the OS. So it installed it FROM THE DVD. This took about an hour. Nothing was of course deleted and the DVD remains intact for our Mac Mini. I guess it would have been faster had I copied the DVD contents to the GO and then run the installer? The DVD shows on screen as Mac OS X Install ESD.

After installation the MacBook shutdown and restarted automatically from the Go drive and Lion was up and running.

As long as I left the GO attached the MacBook booted from that in preference. When the GO was disconnected the MacBook booted up from the internal drive using 10.6.8 which is what one would expect but nice to have confirmation.

I have opened a few programmes such as Pages, Audacity, Photoshop, Lightroom, Mail and all seem to be working OK with Lion and I have tried some of the new features such as Mission Control and Launchpad. I do not have a touch pad so cannot report on that.

I now feel more comfortable with tackling my iMac but .... only after I have backed that up with CCC too. I bought a nice big iOmega drive to use for my backups as I now know not to rely entirely on Time Machine.

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Eleanor Spenceley
Hi Lionel,

I've had a simple upgrade.

1. Backed up system using carbon copy cloner
2. While backup was running, downloaded Lion on another Mac. (Just to save time).
3. Once downloaded, copied over 'Install Mac OS X Lion' (the download file) to an external disk.
4. Connected external disk to 'backed up' Mac. I don't remember if I put the install file in the Applications folder, don't think I did, I think I just copied it to my desktop?!?
5. Installed Lion.
6. Followed through with any extra downloads which appear via Software Update (like iWorks)
7. Repeated install on other Macs.

No issues, except for the odd very minor bug you find with 'new' software. All very enjoyable :-)

Re: Remember: save your downloaded Lion installer before installations.

Avatar Eleanor Spenceley
And if you think there's too much complexity being talked about here. Let's remind ourselves what it's like on the 'other side' when you get out a new PC fresh out of the box.

New PC setup process.

Enjoy.
 
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