When you do that, you will see all of your Mac partitions. You can launch this by holding down OPTION when you start. Once you install Lion, it creates a small hidden partition on your Mac. Lion already has a recovery partition – this is actually very useful to use should you need to do some disk repairs.(Note to “file sharers” – you might NOT want to distribute the “InstallESD.dmg” file on sharing sites as it may contain your Apple ID or may prevent you from getting updates.) However, if you are going to create a Bootable DVD so that you can install it on other computers that are tied with different Apple IDs, you might want to reconsider doing this. Assuming that you have the same Apple ID on all of your computers and you simply want to create an installer for those computers, this is a good solution. The Lion Installer is tied to your Apple ID (unconfirmed) – many App Store purchases “sign” their apps to your Apple ID when you purchase/download via the App Store.
There are some important things to remember, though, before you embark on this effort.
Note: if you are looking for instructions for Mac OS X 10.8 – Mountain Lion – please see this post. You will also be able to order a USB stick from Apple but that will be a bit of costly option, especially when you can do it yourself. Turn on Firewall, install LittleSnitch and turn off wake from sleep for network activityįor some odd reason the Firewall isn’t on by default, so System Prefs > Security and Privacy.In my excitement yesterday about the release of the new Macintosh operating system called “ Lion“, I downloaded and installed the new OS without thinking about creating a bootable DVD since Lion is the first Apple OS to NOT come on DVD but rather be distributed via the App Store.
Use the same account name and password as your previous install – as that makes it easier when copying over your keychain, etc. Then follow the instructions to set it up.
Insert the Lion install disk and restart your Mac, but keep the C key held down and your Mac should boot up from the disk. Open disk utility and drag the disk image into it – then insert a DVD and burn it (make sure verify image is checked). Then go to the /Contents/SharedSupport/ folder and locate the InstallESD.dmg disk image. Go to your applications folder right click on the Install Mac OS X Lion package, and select Show Package Contents. Or, if you’ve already downloaded Lion and gone ahead and upgraded, simply go back to the Lion store, hold down alt and click on the ‘purchased’ tab at the top – the faded out ‘installed’ button for Lion will go and you’ll now have the ‘install’ option again, click it, but when it’s ready to install quit the installer. Burn Lion installer to DVDĭownload Lion from the app store, but quit the installer when it’s ready. Restoring files from a Time Machine back-up alone can give you ACL and permissions problems – so copying in this manner is a better option, IMO. Ideally you want to copy this onto a separate HD, or on a partition of your Time Machine disk (use disk utility to create one if need be). Then hold down the alt key, right click the finder icon in your dock and select ‘relaunch finder’. Defaults write AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true killall Finder