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How to create self-expanding Internet disk images System
I was watching Phil Schiller's Power of X online QuickTime presentation and saw the demo of the new self-expanding disk images by Ken Bereskin. I searched in Disk Copy how to convert an image but couldn't find it. So I emailed Ken and he answered with this excerpt from a soon to be published technote:
Internet-enabled disk images are identical to regular disk images except they have a special flag set. You create the disk image normally and then set the internet-enabled flag with the following command:
 % hdiutil internet-enable -yes|-no|-query [pathToDMG]"
Use -yes to enable the flag, -no to disable the flag, and -query to test whether the dmg file is already internet-enabled.

You can set the internet-enabled flag only for read-only disk images. Read-write disk images cannot be internet-enabled. Older IMG and SMI files also cannot be internet-enabled.

Because Disk Copy clears the internet-enabled flag after it processes a disk image, if you need to test the file before putting it online, you must make a copy of the disk image first and test the copy. You cannot retrieve a processed disk image from the Trash and then place it online, it will no longer be internet-enabled.
Don't forget to check out Ken's Weblog for more OS X tidbits.

[Editor's note: If you haven't seen them yet, these self-processing images are pretty impressive; Safari uses one to open, mount, and install itself. Ken's weblog hasn't been updated since mid-December, probably due to the holiday and that little Macworld thing last week.]
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Security Risk?
Authored by: JohnnyMnemonic on Jan 15, '03 08:34:15PM

Isn't there kinda a security issue with something that installs itself automatically? I would rather have the ability to inspect applications before they install themselves--or at least have the option.



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Security Risk?
Authored by: splattertrousers on Jan 16, '03 01:05:42PM

Absolutely. This is crazy. When I download Safari.dmg, I expect a disk image. If I download Safari.automaticallyinstallsonyourcomputerwithoutasking, then I'd expect it to automatically install without asking.

Hopefully there's a way to disable this feature for all disk images on my computer.



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Security Risk?
Authored by: Eravau on Jan 17, '03 04:44:47PM

As far as I can tell the "security risk" is about the same as having Stuffit Expander automatically post-process .sit, .zip, etc. files. The Safari .dmg downloaded, decompressed, and pulled the Safari out of the .dm, dropped it in my download directory (where the .dmg had originally been downloaed to), and then got rid of the .dmg in which Safari had arrived. It didn't place it in the /Applications directory or anything. It just decompressed it and took it out of its protective shell. That's not exactly what I'd normally call "installing". Just "removing the fluff".



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weird notion of 'automatically installs'
Authored by: cynikal on Jan 16, '03 04:02:42PM

is it me or do you guys have a weird notion of what 'automatically installs' means? because to me.. it just appears that the archive self-destructs after it's been mounted and stuff copied off, no? well maybe there should be more information on this new feature because for one it doesn't make sense why it's called 'internet-enabled' and 2, is there a way to control where it copies the contents off the disk image?

it's kind of neat, but needs to be documented better.



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oh and the man page was not updated
Authored by: cynikal on Jan 16, '03 04:04:33PM

the man page doesn't seem to be updated to mention the internet-enable option anywhere..



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