@bentoms][/url Very new to Casper but tools like this make the transition infinitely easier and a more joyful experience. In testing this in our lab I have seen at least one issue mentioned in this thread, namely the Mac not rebooting or hanging on the gray screen for a long period of time after the reboot command is conceivably given. However another issue I have been seeing and I have not seen mentioned in this thread is one where after the netboot occurs and Casper Imaging is supposed to launch automatically, I see it bounce in the dock, the light (or dot indicating the application is launched) underneath the app appears, the menubar for Casper Imaging will even sometimes briefly appear, but then the app just seems to quit with no interaction whatsoever. Casper Imaging can then manually be relaunched and all works fine but it would be nice to have it work as expected. Have you seen this behaviour in any of your testing?

Another anomaly I have noticed and have not been able to reproduce at will is the password obscuring characters will sometimes randomly change. Sometimes it will be black bullets as I expect it should always be, but other times it is a series of e's that are used when typing the password into the Casper Admin password field.

Hi all,

Just to say i've been quiet as have been beavering away at adding the options to install additional pkgs, so you guys can customise as you want. There should be another version this week.

@sgorney it can create YoYo NBI's on 10.7 - 10.9. It won't run on YoYo, yet.. that's the next next thing to fix.

@activitymonitor, that's interesting.. I've had people net boot 40 clients & image from one server.. so that would presume that the rc.netboot works (was a 10.9 NBI). What were you seeing that made you look into diskless?

@mfcfadmin, that al sounds wrong tbh. BUT, with the hanging issue.. i keep thinking it's the permissions on the NBI or the method used to copy to the server. I have seen it hang, but no longer do. I think the difference is copying over 1GB instead of say wireless. But I'll need to look into it more. Can you answer the below please?

1. What OS version NBI?


2. What server is hosting the NBI? (& version)


3. Which protocol used? (http or nfs)


4. What are the permissions on the NBI once inplace on the server?

@bentoms][/url

Using your rc.netboot file on 10.9, I could not erase a disk with Casper or Disk Utility when netbooted. Tried it on several machines and got could not unmount disk errors.

@bentoms][/url

1. The NBI OS version is 10.9.1


2. Late 2013 Mac Pro 2.7 GHz 12 Core Intel Xeon E5, 64 Gig 1867 MHz DDR3 RAM running Server 3.1.2


3. HTTP


4. Permissions rwxrwxr-x or by my figuring 775.

The image was created on the computer that would eventually host it and therefore it loaded/saved it into the NetBootSP0 folder itself upon successful creation of image.

Again, thanks for this tool and assistance.

@mfcfadmin wrote:

1. The NBI OS version is 10.9.1

Sorry for butting in, but just curious, why not 10.9.5 (agnostic)?

@donmontalvo

Trying to keep things consistent.

We are deploying 10.9.1 images because in our environment we have found that if we upgrade beyond 10.9.1, Apple native apps do not work with our network accounts. Without going into too much detail we are using network home directories hosted on a NetAPP and authenticated via Kerberized NFS. However if we go beyond 10.9.1 the apps break.

@mfcfadmin So 10.9.1 should be fine since Apple KB HT1159 shows the Late 2013 Mac Pro shipped with 10.9.

I thought you meant your NBI is at 10.9.1, we usually make that the latest agnostic OS version, currently 10.9.5.

Do

If it makes a difference the NBI is based on/created from 10.9.1 (version 1.3.37 build 13C64) never booted AutoDMG image. The actual OS on the Mac Pro is 10.9.4.

I just tested this out on our systems here and everything went very smoothly. About the only thing I would like to be able to change is the dock. We always put Disk Utility into the dock to make it a little quicker to access in case the local drive needs to be erased or renamed prior to imaging.

We also sometimes use the netboot image for recovery / repair, making easy access to disk utility handy.

@activitymonitor that's odd & definitely not something i've seen. There have been plenty of people advising it's worked for them as diskless using the rc.netboot fix for 30+ Macs or without form up to 10.

@mfcfadmin what models of Macs are you netbooting? I'm wondering if they do not support 10.9.1 hence the oddities your seeing.

@musat, thanks! Next commit will allow you to install PKG's with which you can customise the root user account.

@bentoms

So far the bulk of them have been Late 2012 or beyond Mac Mini's. Core i5's or better all with 16 GB RAM.

@mfcfadmin, hmmm.

Have your tried a variety of aged models? Same result?

Was the AutoDMG image created from the install OS X.app?

Can you try & stop the NetInstall service, then restart? If that fails, can you empty NetBootClients() & then try?

Lastly, can you try with a 10.9.5 NBI?

@bentoms

Have not yet tried on older equipment as I had a new shipment of Minis to deploy. I can eventually get around to testing on older hardware and post results.

Yes the AutoDMG was created from the Install OS X. app 10.9.1 (version 1.3.37 build 13C64)

NetInstall service was stopped and and restarted upon creation of the new NBI image I even went so far as to reboot the Mac. The NetBootClients() folder was also emptied.

I will try with 10.9.5 and see if results vary.

Thank you!

@bentoms

The more I play, the more I see. One of the other things I have noticed about it "hanging" or remaining on the grey screen is that sometimes it works completely as expected and other times it just does seemingly "hang" there on the grey screen. I have not yet been afforded the luxury to just let it sit for a period of time to actually see if the "hung" grey screen actually does ever reboot given some time. However when I do get a chance I will be patient and see this happens. This was just an aside to let you know that without any changes whatsoever I am sometimes seeing the expected behaviour.

Hi All,

New release.. same link as above.

0.16
— Enabled adding additional pkgs & certs.
— Amended kernel cache generation to see try & stop the hang on restart.
— Changed root user environment back to Apple defaultsish. (Dock is stripped to Finder, Casper Imaging & Trash). Use PKGs to customise

it's probably me, but I get the beachball o death every time I launch .15 or .16. It prompts for the admin credentials but doesn't let me type, gotta force quit.

@jwojda are your launching it on 10.10?

Thank you for your work @bentoms][/url. AutoCasperNBI is a great tool and I really appreciate it.

The only issue I see (with all versions I tried, including the new .16) is, that the keyboard is not set to the one I choosed while creating the NetBoot image.

I always choose the keyboard "SwissGerman", but after booting a machine with the created NetBoot image the keyboard seems to be US (or UK, not sure).

The server is running OS X 10.9.5 as well as the created NetBoot image. The same problem existed with OS X 10.9.4.

@bentoms theoretically, though I cannot confirm nor deny based on NDA :)

@fritz.schlapbach, thanks for letting me know. With so many layouts & ID values for them, I may have a typo. Will have a nose.

@jwojda, I've been waiting for GM release before fixing that. Which happened to be yesterday. A fix will be in place soonish.

@jwojda I can not confirm or deny that I read that post.

@bentoms I'm working on getting a used MacPro5,1 for home, so I can run ESXi and access it through VMWare Fusion 7 Pro. Although I haven't pulled the trigger, ESXi 6 is supposed to support MacPro6,1 (not sure about Mac minis).

Once I get this set up I plan to jump in head first, expect feedback... :D

Don

@donmontalvo - lmao

@bentoms, this is an exceptional tool. Thank you! We have a sizable environment and are using 11 Xserves and 11 Mac Minis to host multiple .nbi's that point EFI32Bit machines to JSS v.8.73 or EFI64Bit machines to JSS v.9.52.

Using the model property filtering in OS X Server is very useful to us for a number of reasons. I wanted to ask about AutoCasperNBI and the NBImageInfo.plist that it creates. Once I upload an .nbi and enable it, there is no option to filter it as we generally do with an .nbi we've created using Apple's System Image Utility.

Is the NBImageInfo.plist something you would recommend a user to modify? Specifically, I'm referring to the list of devices that normally appears above EnabledSystemIdentifiers. I'm somewhat of a novice on all of this, I apologize. Does AutoCasperNBI rely more on the i386/PlatformSupport.plist perhaps?

Thank you, sir.

@fritz.schlapbach it should be fixed with next release. Thanks for pointing it out.

@evanmellichampe i'll need to look at that, it's not something i do.. but also isn't something i'm blocking on purpose.