remotely install leopard?

[excalibur313]

This is kind of a strange request, but I was curious if there is a way to install os x onto an external drive using terminal within os x. The issue is that my parents who live far away are having issues with a laptop. I had them plug it into a working imac via firewire in Target mode with leopard. I was thinking I could use screen sharing to use the imac and I would like to troubleshoot the laptop's drive from the imac. She can't even log into the laptop because it keeps looping back to the log in screen and she only has one user name. If I was super fancy I'd be able to some how fix appropriate files on the laptop, but now that she has all her files backed up, I'd like to just wipe the drive and install os x on it. Problem is that I have the family leopard disk and even if they did have it, they wouldn't have a clue where to start and I'd just prefer to do it remotely if possible. What do you guys think? If I can get to terminal on their computer using screen sharing and can mount a copy of leopard, could I do it all without having to reboot the computer which would kill my screen sharing? Alternatively, I could also mount that drive remotely on my computer and then just use terminal to install it. Is this crazy?
Thanks for your help!

 

[Consultant]

Not possible as far as I know because OSX installs requires booting from install disk. (In fact it's really easy).

It's not very difficult to walk the person through OSX install though. If you think otherwise you might need to work on your communication skills. =p

 

[robbieduncan]

I'd also like to point out that what you are describing is breaking the Leopard EULA. There is no license that permits the sharing of a copy between distinct physical residences: a Family Pack of Leopard has 5 licenses but they are restricted as follows: "The Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that household. By “household” we mean a person or persons who share the same housing unit such as a home, apartment, mobile home, or condominium, including student members who are primary residents of that household but reside at a separate on-campus location."

So unless you are a student who is living in a on-campus location I suggest you have your parents buy a legal copy of Leopard.

 

[excalibur313]

I actually am a student who is living on campus and lives at home in the summer so it is fully within the EULA and breaks no such contract. While you do acknowledge that this might be the case, starting off the message accusing me of being a pirate isn't very nice, now isn't it?

Thanks for the advice on installing, there was kind of a time crunch involved so I didn't think I'd be able to send it. I was able to remotely install it by using SMB to mount the drive and OSInstall.mpkg to install on an external without rebooting. It took like 4 hours and worked really well. In retrospect it was kind of like dropping a nuclear warhead to wipe out a rabid dog because I should have been able to fix the log in problem without reinstalling, but I guess that's why I need to work on my terminal skills.