I have been given an iMac G4 with a set of OS9 disks and single disk labeled OSX 10.2. The current version of the OS installed on the iMac is 10.4.3.
I have cleaned it up by removing the previous user and installing a new user as well as setting up the root account.
Although have an IT background and am very familiar with the various flavors of Windows and Linux servers (Slackware) this is my first encounter with an iMac. As a result I would now like to store a disk image of the iMac drive for back up on a USB hard drive before playing with it in case I mess it up and so I can perhaps try Linux on it without permanently losing the present OS. As this USB drive has a lot of other backup files on it I really want to create an image file of the hard drive, not a clone copy.
What I have tried so far is as follows.
1. Booted up on the iMac hard drive and logged in as root and ran the disk utility. I then tried to make an image but ran into the error message that the resource was busy. Pretty much what you would expect since there are files open and there are processes running.
2. Booted up on CD one of OS9 CDs and ran the disk utility but could not find a way to make an image. I also found that the “Terminal” option is grayed out so I reached a dead end,
3. Booted up on the disk labled OSX 10.2 and found the same story. There is no way to create an image from the disk utility and the “Terminal” option is again grayed out.
4. Since I am very familiar with Slackware I next downloaded an .iso file of Slackintosh and made the install DVD thinking I might able to copy the OSX disk utility from the hard drive to the RAM drive and run it from there. I know the iMac is a BSD flavor of _nix but I thought there might be a chance that it would also run under Linux. The install DVD booted up fine on the iMac but the HFS file type is not recognized by the Slackintosh mount command. Another dead end.
5. I then searched the Internet for possible live CD/DVDs that might work and found references to SuperDuper and Carbon Copy but they are commercial products so I passed them up. Since this is a relatively old iMac which will only be used for learning about iMacs and which will never replace any of my other PCs or servers, I really cannot see investing any money in it. I am familiar with Clonzeilla but apparently there is no live version for a Power PC.
Does anyone have something else to try?
I have cleaned it up by removing the previous user and installing a new user as well as setting up the root account.
Although have an IT background and am very familiar with the various flavors of Windows and Linux servers (Slackware) this is my first encounter with an iMac. As a result I would now like to store a disk image of the iMac drive for back up on a USB hard drive before playing with it in case I mess it up and so I can perhaps try Linux on it without permanently losing the present OS. As this USB drive has a lot of other backup files on it I really want to create an image file of the hard drive, not a clone copy.
What I have tried so far is as follows.
1. Booted up on the iMac hard drive and logged in as root and ran the disk utility. I then tried to make an image but ran into the error message that the resource was busy. Pretty much what you would expect since there are files open and there are processes running.
2. Booted up on CD one of OS9 CDs and ran the disk utility but could not find a way to make an image. I also found that the “Terminal” option is grayed out so I reached a dead end,
3. Booted up on the disk labled OSX 10.2 and found the same story. There is no way to create an image from the disk utility and the “Terminal” option is again grayed out.
4. Since I am very familiar with Slackware I next downloaded an .iso file of Slackintosh and made the install DVD thinking I might able to copy the OSX disk utility from the hard drive to the RAM drive and run it from there. I know the iMac is a BSD flavor of _nix but I thought there might be a chance that it would also run under Linux. The install DVD booted up fine on the iMac but the HFS file type is not recognized by the Slackintosh mount command. Another dead end.
5. I then searched the Internet for possible live CD/DVDs that might work and found references to SuperDuper and Carbon Copy but they are commercial products so I passed them up. Since this is a relatively old iMac which will only be used for learning about iMacs and which will never replace any of my other PCs or servers, I really cannot see investing any money in it. I am familiar with Clonzeilla but apparently there is no live version for a Power PC.
Does anyone have something else to try?
