Actually, I take back part of what I just typed. When testing a current-model TouchBar MacBook Pro 15inch, there is a pause after the globe. The progress gets stuck and appears to be making zero progress. I waited a few minutes on my previous attempt and thought it had failed which is when I replied. However, I booted again into verbose mode and noted that it appears to pause at this line in the verbose mode logs: Extension SDK cache is not present. Attempting to rebuild...

However, I waited longer this time and even though the progress bar never makes progress, it does eventually boot. This is the case over NFS or HTTP. Now, since the results are intermittent I can't be sure this is a 100% fix. I had to started testing on my own because my coworker in London went home for the evening. I may need to wait until tomorrow to have him further verify whether changing the permissions helps.

@bmarks Cool. I'm NW of London, so should not be computering now either :)

Once or twice, I have had to change from NFS to HTTP. Might be worth a shot?

So, might be a better default/recommendation now

I did see in the verbose mode logs something along the lines of "System Integrity Protection is engaged." Other Macs I am testing here at my desk are working so far. However, I may not be the best test candidate because part of the issue was that I didn't have any of these issues personally before deploying the NBI.

@bmarks that's normal.

TBH, i've tried as much as possible to stay as true to Apple's NetBoot creation scripts as possible. So the SIP message is normal.

I was mistaken. In the troubleshooting process I had set the 10,12 boot disks to boot over HTTP, In any case, it does not work reliably with that or NFS.:(

Sorry for delay, had to wait for someone in a different time zone. It does not appear that chown'ing the NBI makes a difference.

These don't feel like issues that'll be fixed by an OS update, but I am going to create a new NBI with 10.12.4 today and I'll post the results here.

I saw this a while ago, but didn't mention it. I just saw it again though. The first time I booted this new NBI, I saw a "Completing Installation: X minutes remaining" message. I think it only happens once. My base OS was created with AutoDMG. I don't know if this means anything, but I figured I'd mention it this time.

@bmarks odd..

But please let me know how 10.12.4 goes.

If it works locally, but not in the remote location.. is it possible to build an NBI at the remote location?

For me in Portland, I think there is some improvement. Last week, I was unable to boot a 2012 MacBook Air (that was my only failure last week.) This week with 10.12.4 I can. More of the failures, though, were in our London lab and I will definitely post those results tomorrow.

Additionally, I did just see the ""Completing Installation: X minutes remaining" a second time. I tested four Macs here at my desk, and the two TouchBar models were the ones that displayed that message. What I didn't do you is chown the NBI like before, so I will see if that makes any difference.

After chown'ing the NBI, I'm two for two not seeing that "Completing Installation: X minutes remaining" message after I was previously two for two seeing it on different TouchBar Macs. Maybe just an anomaly.

@bmarks oh.. TBP.. hmm.. maybe that message is due to this?

I meant to post this earlier, but this is now working for us.

The boot disk is based on 10.12.4 and we checked reduce image size as well as "Install modified rc.netboot". In the past we never checked reduce image size, so perhaps that was it, or the 10.12.4 release.

@powellbc Awesome news