A bare-bones tool to install macOS and a set of packages on a target volume. Typically these would be packages that "enroll" the machine into your management system; upon completion of the macOS install these tools would take over and continue the setup and configuration of the machine.
installr is designed to run in Recovery boot (and also possibly Internet Recovery), allowing you to reinstall a machine for redeployment.
If you are preparing a fresh-out-of-the-box machine, consider NOT reinstalling macOS and just installing your additional packages. bootstrappr can help you with that task.
Copy an Install macOS application into the install/ directory. This must be a "full" installer, containing the Contents/Resources/startosinstall tool.
I've currently tested the 10.13.4 (17E199), 10.13.6 (17G65), and some Mojave Beta (18A353d, 18A365a, 18A371a) installers. Older installers may or may not work.
Add desired packages to the install/packages directory. Ensure all packages you add can be properly installed to volumes other than the current boot volume.
startosinstall requires that all additional packages be Distribution-style packages (typically built with productbuild) and not component-style packages (typically built with pkgbuild).
If your packages just have payloads, they should work fine. Pre- and postinstall scripts need to be checked to not use absolute paths to the current startup volume. The installer system passes the target volume in the third argument $3 to installation scripts.
startosinstall in High Sierra ignores additional package's RestartActions. This means that if software installed by one or more or your packages requires a restart for full functionality, it won't be fully functional when the High Sierra installer completes its work.
The startosinstall tool will work through the packages in alphanumerical order. To control the order, you can prefix filenames with numbers.
installr is particularly useful with Macs with T2 chips, which do not support NetBoot, and are tricky to get to boot from external media. To use installr to install macOS and additional packages on a T2 Mac, you'd boot into Recovery (Command-R at start up), and mount the installr disk and run installr.
- Preparation:
- Copy the contents of the install directory to a USB Thumb drive.
- Running installr:
- Start up in Recovery mode.
- Connect USB Thumbdrive.
- Open Terminal (from the Utilities menu if in Recovery).
/Volumes/VOLUME_NAME/run(usesudoif not in Recovery)
- Preparation:
- Create a disk image using the
make_dmg.shscript. - Copy the disk image to a web server.
- Create a disk image using the
- Running installr:
- Start up in Recovery mode.
- Open Terminal (from the Utilities menu if in Recovery).
hdiutil mount <your_bootstrap_dmg_url>/Volumes/install/run(usesudoif not in Recovery)