MacAdmin 101: Building a recovery partition installer package using Create Recovery Partition Installer.app

As part of the process of deploying Macs in my shop, it is occasionally necessary to image or re-image them with a disk image containing the latest version of OS X or macOS. To assist with making sure that the Mac’s recovery partition is correctly applied as part of the imaging process, an installer package which installs or repairs recovery partitions is installed as part of the imaging process.

When I need to create recovery partition installers, I use an application named Create Recovery Partition Installer.app to generate them. Create Recovery Partition Installer.app is an open-source tool written by Per Olofsson that lets you create an installer package that creates and updates recovery partitions on boot drives for both OS X and macOS.

For more details on how Create Recovery Partition Installer.app can be used to build recovery partition installers, please see below the jump.

Before building a disk image using Create Recovery Partition Installer.app, you should prepare a convenient Mac or a virtual machine to act as an Create Recovery Partition Installer.app build machine. To accomplish this task:

a. Download and install the latest version of Create Recovery Partition Installer.app on the Mac in question.

 

b. Download the installer for the relevant OS version for the recovery partition installer.

 

c. Launch Create Recovery Partition Installer.app. The reason to do this is that when Create Recovery Partition Installer.app launches for the first time, it downloads new copies of software components which it then uses as part of the build process for recovery partition installer packages.

 

Once you have completed the necessary preparations, see below for the process of building a recovery partition installer. As an example, the process shown is building a recovery partition installer for OS X 10.11.6.

1. Launch Create Recovery Partition Installer.app.

2. Drag and drop the relevant OS installer into the source box.

 

3. Create Recovery Partition Installer.app will suggest a name based on the OS version for the installer package.

Change the name as desired, as well as choosing a convenient location to save the installer package to, then click the Save button.

 

4. Create Recovery Partition Installer.app will create a recovery partition installer and store it in the requested location.

 

5. Once the recovery partition installer build process has been completed, click the Quit button.

The complete process should look similar to what is shown below.