19-05-2021

Apr 02, 2019  To convert DMG to ISO, first open the PowerISO application on Windows and then select the tools option from the top ribbon. From the dropdown list, select the option labeled as convert. Now you will see a dialog box titled convert image file. You can use this to convert image files from one file format to another.

Jamf Composer has always had two formats to build installers. The standard pkg and the seemlingly standard (but not) dmg. The pkg option will build a standard pkg installer file, which will install with any system that can install pkg files.

  1. Aug 29, 2019  How to convert DMG to PKG in MacOS. Posted on August 29, 2019 August 29, 2019 by Udhy. If you are trying to push some application in the network where you have macOS, you might need.pkg file rather than.dmg. In this blog, I have taken the reference for Skype. You can follow the same command line for other application.
  2. Aug 11, 2019  When you double click a.dmg file, it will 'Mount' on the desktop. This is the only way to access or modify the contents of the Image. After you add your files to the image, you can unmount it and then click the 'Convert' button in the toolbar. This will let you compress the image or change it to read only (or add encryption).

The dmg option will build a standard dmg disk image file, with the payload of the installer as contents. On its own, however, this dmg cannot do anything. The Jamf Pro management system how ever will understand what to do and how to install the files from the dmg to a system. There are certain features in Jamf Pro which can install and distribute files to user directories and templates (called ‘Fill User Templates’ FUT and ‘Fill Every User’ FEU) which only work with dmg installers in Jamf Pro.

However, Jamf themselves have been recommending to use the standard pkg format in favor of their proprietary use of dmg. Also the Composer application is 32-bit and its future is uncertain.

Luckily there are plenty of great other third-party tools to build installer packages. I cover many of them in my book: Packaging for Apple Administrators

In general, it is probably preferable to re-visit your imaging process and rebuild any installer you still may have in dmg format from scratch. However, in some cases that might not be possible or necessary.

Terminal.pkg

Since the Composer generated dmgs contain all the files for the payload in the proper folder structure you can just use the entire mounted volume as your payload root for pkgbuild. You can easily convert a Composer generated installer dmg to a standard pkg with these commands:

1) mount the dmg:

this will output a bunch of info, the very last bit is the mount point of the dmg /Volumes/Sample (the name will depend on the dmg)

2) build a pkg with the contents of the mounted dmg as a payload:

Convert Dmg To Pkg Terminal

This will create Sample-1.0.pkg in your current working directory. (I like to include the version in the pkg file name, but that is entirely optional.)

3) cleanup: unmount the dmg

Convert Dmg To Pkg Jamf

Obviously this will not work well with other dmgs, such as Full System dmgs, or dmgs downloaded from the web, which contain an app that should be dragged to /Applications to install (use quickpkg for those dmgs).