Part  X

Appendix

Appendix  A

Installing Lion and Recovery Options

There are two primary ways to get Lion on a Mac: either you buy a new Mac with Lion preinstalled or you purchase Lion from the Mac App Store and download and install it. This appendix will walk you though the initial installation process of Lion using the App Store purchase and then discuss using Lions recovery options if you ever need to fix or reinstall Lion at a later time.

What You Need to Install Lion

To install Lion on an existing Mac, your Mac must have a few things:

  • Your Mac must have a 64-bit Intel processor including Intel Core 2 Duo, Xeon, and Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processors. (Macs with Intel Core Duo or Core Solo processors will not be able to run Lion.)
  • You Mac must have at least 2GB of RAM (memory) and 7GB of free disk space.
  • Your Mac must have Snow Leopard installed and updated to Mac OS X 10.6.6 (10.6.8 is recommended).

NOTE: Beyond these base requirements, certain features may not be available to some Macs depending on how they are configured. One notable example is that depending on the AirPort card that came with your Mac, AirDrop may not work. (This includes MacBook Airs and Mac Minis built as recently as 2010.)

Installing Lion

Provided you meet the hardware and software requirements, you are ready to install Lion. Let's walk you through the process:

  1. The first step is to open the App Store application and purchase and download Lion. Lion is available for $29.99 from the App Store (using the App Store is covered in Chapter 6). Once you complete your purchase, the Install Mac OS X Lion installer (Figure XA–1) will download to your Applications folder and automatically launch, starting the installation.
    Image

    Figure XA–1. The Install Mac OS X Lion application will start automatically after the download is complete. Upon successful installation and creation of a recovery partition, this application will be deleted.

    NOTE: Besides purchasing Lion from the App Store, Lion is available for purchase on a USB key from Apple for $69. The steps for installing Lion from the USB key are similar to the steps here. One significant difference is that the USB key install does not install a recovery partition, so for maintenance and recovery, you will need to keep the key handy.

  2. Upon the launch of the installer, you will be greeted with a welcome screen (Figure XA–2) that will start walking you through the installation process.
    Image

    Figure XA–2. When the Lion installer launches, you will be presented with a screen that will walk you through the installation.

  3. Clicking Continue on the initial installer screen will take you to the next screen where you will be asked to accept the software license agreement. You must accept this by clicking Agree to continue. (Once you click Agree, a dialog box will appear asking you to verify your agreement.)
  4. After you agree to the license agreement (twice), you will be presented with the next screen that will ask you what disk you would like to install Lion on (Figure XA–3). The disk the installer is installed on will be chosen by default. If you would like to install Lion on another disk or partition, click the Show All Disks... button to be presented with a list of all available partitions.
    Image

    Figure XA–3. After you accept the license agreement, you will be asked to confirm the disk you would like to install Lion on; to view all available partitions, click the Show All Disks... button.

  5. Once you have selected the disk and clicked the Install button, you will then be prompted to enter your administrator password, after which the installation will begin immediately. The actual installation happens in two parts. First the installer will prepare the installation (Figure XA–4). After a couple minutes of this, your computer will restart, and the actual installation will take place. (This can take from ten minutes to an hour to complete.)
    Image

    Figure XA–4. When you start the installation, the installer will first prepare the installation and then restart to complete it. The total installation time seems to average about 30 to 45 minutes, but this will vary on your hardware and whether you are installing over an existing system or on a clean partition.

  6. Upon successful installation, you will be greeted by the Mac OS X Setup Assistant. If you have installed Lion on top of an existing Snow Leopard partition, the Assistant will present you with some informational screens (Figure XA–5). If you installed Lion on a new drive or partition, it will ask if you'd like to use the Migration Assistant to transfer your settings from another partition, Time Machine backup, or another computer (you can even transfer information from a Windows PC). If you choose not to transfer settings from elsewhere, you will be walked through some basic setup screens where you will be asked to create a new user, set up networking, and register with Apple.
Image

Figure XA–5. After successfully installing Lion, the Setup Assistant will start. The screens you are presented with will vary based on whether you installed Lion over an existing Snow Leopard system or whether you installed Lion on a clean disk or partition.

THE MIGRATION ASSISTANT

The Migration Assistant is a utility that can transfer user accounts, files, applications, and settings to your Mac from another startup disk, from a Time Machine backup, or from another Mac or PC over a network. If you installed Mac OS X on a clean partition (a disk or partition that has been formatted prior to installation) or when you first turn on a new Mac with a fresh copy of Lion, one of the first decisions you will have is whether you want to transfer users, files, and settings from another partition, drive, or system .. This is awesome if you have purchased a new Mac and are worried about transferring your existing data to your new computer.

If you decide not to transfer any information when you are first setting up Lion, then you need to manually add a new user and configure your networking when you are first getting started with Lion. After that, you can use Migration Assistant (which is located in the Launchpad Utilities folder) at any time to transfer information to your computer with one caveat: once a username is created in Lion, Migration Assistant will overwrite that account, so if you create an account named “Scott” on Lion and then try to copy a user named “Scott” to the system using Migration Assistant, these accounts will not merge.

With Lion, Migration Assistant will even transfer user data from a Windows PC to a Mac (though not applications). This allows documents, videos, music (MP3s or existing iTunes library), contacts, calendars, and even e-mail (from Outlook and Windows Mail Live) to be moved from a Windows PC and installed on your new Mac, all ready to go.

Mac OS X Recovery

When Lion is installed, it will automatically create a recovery partition on the boot disk of your hard drive. By booting into this partition, you will be able to reinstall Mac OS X Lion as well as access additional utilities that previously were commonly found on Mac OS X install media.

To boot your Mac using the recovery partition, you may hold Command-R when you start or restart your computer to boot directly to the recover partition; alternately, hold the Option key and select the Recovery HD from the resulting list of bootable partitions.

NOTE: The recovery partition will not be created on systems with unsupported partition schemes (e.g., you have added extra partitions to a startup disk that has a Boot Camp partition). If you find yourself in situation, you will need to alter your existing partitions to a supported scheme prior to installing Lion; otherwise, you will need to either manually create a recovery disk on your own (covered next) or do without a recovery option.

Upon booting into the recovery partition, you will be presented with a simple window (Figure XA–6) offering you four common recovery options: Restore From a Time Machine Backup, Reinstall Mac OS X, Get HelpOnline, and Disk Utility.

Image

Figure XA–6. When you boot into the recovery partition, you will be presented with a window giving you access to common recovery options.

The Restore From Time Machine Backup option will allow you to recover your system to a previous Time Machine backup state. The Reinstall Mac OS X option will launch the Mac OS X installer to allow you to install or reinstall Mac OS X Lion. The Get Help Online option will open Safari to Apple's Support web site (you could of course continue to browse to any other web site if you so desired). The Disk Utility option will launch the Disk Utility (covered in Chapter 21) so you can manage and repair a disk or disk partition.

SETTING A FIRMWARE PASSWORD

Besides the recovery options, the booting from the recovery disk reveals one other unique feature: setting a firmware password. Setting the firmware password provides additional security for your Mac OS X system by requiring a password to be entered when attempting to boot your system from any nonstartup disk or when attempting to use special startup commands.

To set a firmware password, launch the Firmware Password Utility (Figure XA–7) by selecting Utilities > Firmware Password Utility from the menu. From there you can click the Turn on Firmware Password... button to set and activate the firmware password.

Image

Figure XA–7. The Firmware Password Utility allows you to set and activate a password that will be required when you try to boot your computer using any volume other than the selected startup disk.

Without this option, anyone with physical access to your system and an external bootable disk could use their disk to boot your computer and access any unencrypted files on your drives.

NOTE: Besides the Firmware Password Utility, the Terminal app and Network Utility are also available from the recovery Utilities menu.

Lion Recovery Disk Assistant

Although having a recovery partition on your primary disk is useful for a quick repair or recovery, it won't help you if your hard drive fails entirely. Because of this, it's not a bad idea to create a separate recovery option on an external disk or flash drive. And while creating a stand-alone recovery drive on your own isn't too hard, Apple has made the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant available to make this process very easy. Using the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant is a simple three-step process.

NOTE: Before you begin, you will need an external disk to create the recovery disk on. A 4GB flash drive will make a lovely external recovery HD.

  1. Download the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant from Apple. For information and a link to the download, visit http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433.
  2. Once you have downloaded the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, copy it from its disk image to somewhere on your hard drive, and launch it.
  3. When launched, the Assistant will ask you to select the external volume to create a recovery disk on. Once the external drive is selected, the assistant will do its thing and turn the external volume into a recovery HD.

When the Assistant finishes, you should have a new bootable recovery option. To use your new recovery disk, plug it in to your computer and hold the Option key when you start or restart you computer. When it's starting up, you should be presented with a list of bootable volumes, and the external recovery HD should be among them.

MANUALLY CREATING A RECOVERY DISK

If you want, or need, to create a bootable recovery disk without using the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, you can, but you must follow these steps:

  1. Once you have downloaded the Lion installer from the App Store, cancel the installation. (You may of course continue with the installation at any time, but upon completion, the Install Mac OS X Lion application will be deleted, and we need that.)
  2. Go to the Applications folder and locate the Install Mac OS X Lion application. Control-click it and select Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu.
  3. Navigate through the contents Contents/SharedSupport folders until you find the InstallESD.dmg file. This is a recovery disk image.
  4. Using Disk Utility (see Chapter 21 for details), restore this disk image onto your desired external drive or partition.

Presto, you should now have a bootable recovery disk.

Now, what if you already installed Lion and the Install Mac OS X Lion application is no longer in your Applications folder? In this case, open the Mac App Store, and hold down the Option key while you click the Purchased tab at the top. Provided you previously purchased Lion, this should cause the Installed button to change into an Install button, allowing you to redownload it.

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