I'm trying to make the switch from a monolithic workflow with DeployStudio to a packaged workflow with Casper, both thin and not. With DS, I used admin autologin and a login script to execute tasks that need to happen on the first boot after DS has finalized the image. I let DS do the binding and my script is there to basically license Adobe Creative Cloud.

I have already been using launchd for tasks such as rebooting daily and running a weekly data clean-up script. This is my first time trying to get something to launch once only on the first time the machine is booted. At the moment it is not working. The logic is a little convoluted and I am open to suggestions on how to simplify this.

All of my scripts are in /Library/AdminToolBox, a directory I created for such things. My launchd plist looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>ca.organization_name.firstboot</string>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>LaunchOnlyOnce</key>
<true/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Library/AdminToolBox/on-firstboot.sh</string>
</array>
</dict>
</plist>

The on-firstboot.sh script is there to find out if this is the first time we booted. If so, we delete the empty file /Library/AdminToolBox/firstboot and execute our script, /Library/AdminToolBox/firsttime_actions.sh:

#!/bin/sh

# Entire script is conditional on existence of firstboot file
# If it is missing, we exit immediately

if [ -f /Library/AdminToolBox/firstboot ] ;
then

rm -f /Library/AdminToolBox/firstboot

/Library/AdminToolBox/firsttime_actions.sh ;
fi

exit 0

The firsttime_actions.sh script:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/sbin/ipconfig/waitforall

# Do something to indicate we executed
touch /Library/AdminToolBox/executed_firsttime_actions.txt
# Bail out of here, this is just a test
exit 0

# Serialize Adobe CC
/Library/AdminToolBox/adobe_prtk --tool=VolumeSerialize --provfile=/Library/AdminToolBox/prov.xml

# Set system name
/Library/AdminToolBox/doname.sh

# Install QuickAdd package to add system to Casper Suite
/usr/sbin/installer -pkg /Library/AdminToolBox/QuickAdd.pkg -target /

# Unload our startup item and delete it
launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/ca.durhamcollege.firstboot.plist
rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/ca.durhamcollege.firstboot.plist

Unfortunately, the file /Library/AdminToolBox/executed_firsttime_actions.txt is not being created so I presume all of this code is failing somehow. I have never had trouble getting the login hook trick to work but it is cumbersome as it means the image is created with the hidden admin account set to automatically login just so we can get our script to run. I'd love to move on to launchd but I'm obviously doing something wrong.

The permissions on the launchd item is correct. I have tried various permissions on the scripts in the AdminToolBox directory but I normally set them like this:

chmod 700 *.sh

Cheers...