Read the rest of the hint for the how-to...
Instructions:
- With Apple's Disk Utility, create an image (DMG file) of the first Panther CD. Let's name it "Panther.dmg" and place it on the Desktop. IMPORTANT: the image must be in read/write format so you can add files later. Don't mount the image file yet.
- Now head to the Terminal. Type the following:
hdiutil resize -size 2g -imageonly ~/Desktop/Panther.dmg
This command resizes the image to two gigabytes (this took 1 minute, 20 seconds on my 1GHz TiBook). Now, the partition inside the image hasn't been resized yet. For that, type:hdiutil resize -size 1.9g -partitionOnly ~/Desktop/Panther.dmg
Notice how the partition size is smaller than the image size. How much smaller should it be compared to the image file? I don't know, but hdiutil will give you an error if you try to grow the partition beyond the space available in the image file.
- Mount Panther.dmg. Now you have a disk with 1.28 gigabytes of free space.
- Insert Disc 2 and copy all files from Mac OS X Install Disc 2 -> Packages to Mac OS X Install Disc 1 -> System -> Installation -> Packages. The Finder will give you a warning about items with the same name: select Replace. It seems Disc 1 has placeholders for all the installable packages.
- Repeat step 4 with disc 3.
- Open the file
Mac OS X Install Disc 1 -> System -> Installation -> Packages -> OSInstallCache.plist
with a text editor (or with Apple's Property List Editor, included with XCode). Delete any IFPkgFlagProxyPackageLocation key. They look like this:
Where ? stands for Disc 2 or 3 and ***.... for a Package name. Removing these lines tells the Apple Installer that it should look for the packages at Mac OS X Install Disc 1 -> System -> Installation -> Packages. Delete all text from <key> to </string> (including these two keywords).<key>IFPkgFlagProxyPackageLocation</key> <string>disc://Mac OS X Install Disc ?/********** </string>
- Unmount the disc and burn to a DVD.
Now, you can grow the image file and partition beyond two gigs (to fill the entire DVD) and copy additional installers. I used a DVD-RW so I will reburn it with the MS Office "installer" and a few extras (xCode, etc.). I guess this hint will really be helpful to people maintaining a lab full of Macs.

