Lion Netboot - Startup disk has no more space available

Support had me increase the NetBoot.dmg size and it did not help in my case.

Just wanted to throw my scenarios out there just in case it helps find an answer. Our servers and images are running 10.7.1

-At one client I created the NBI on the latest MBP w/ 8 GB of ram. The error only pops up when imaging a machine with less than 8 GB or ram in it.
-At the same client I created an MBA NBI on the latest MBA w/ 4GB of ram and the error pops up when imaging, even using the machine it was created on.
-At another client I created the NBI on the latest iMac w/ 4GB of ram and I have yet to see the error on any machines even w/ less than 4 GB of ram.

Brian

--
Brian Goldstein
Singer Consulting, Inc.
brian at randsinger.com
888.222.2959 x2103

I see the same with a 10.7 NetBoot created using the Automator action.

My NetBoot server is 10.7.1

Regards,

Ben.

Your NetBoot server has to be the same or higher OS version to host
the image. In this case, to host a 10.7 NetBoot image your server has
to be running 10.7.x. You cannot host a 10.7.x image from a 10.6.8
server.

Steve

I have the same problem on a 10.7.x server when netbooting 10.7.x images.

John Wojda
Lead System Engineer, DEI & Mobility
3333 Beverly Rd.  B2-338B
Hoffman Estates, IL 60179
Phone:  (847)286-7855
Page:  (224)532.3447
Team Lead DEI: Matt Beiriger
Team Lead Mobility: Chris Sta Ana
                   Mac Tip/Tricks/Self Service & Support

"Any time you choose to be inflexible in your approach to an unpredictable project you are already building failure into your plan"

Hi,
On 6 Oct 2011, at 12:27, Baz Curtis wrote:

I have a Lion Netboot image booting fine from 10.6.8 server. Casper Imaging opens and has no config option. I have to close it and then reopen it holding down alt. It fails to erase the hard disk prior to imaging and I haven't had time to look at these last 2 issues, but it does boot fine into Lion.

Best wishes

Michael

On 6 Oct 2011, at 08:58, Patrick Lawrence wrote:

Hi List I am planning on imaging some Lion machines soon so I had a look at the Casper NetBoot Automator Action and its associated instructions. I created a Lion NetBoot image by doing the following: Installed Lion onto a Macbook Pro and setup a user Booted the Macbook Pro into Target Disk Mode and connected it to another Lion machine Used Composer to Create an OS Package Mounted the resulting DMG and used it as the source for System Image Utility to create a NetBoot image using the Casper Automator Action I can then NetBoot my laptop to this image and run Casper Imaging to install a configuration. During the install a warning box appears stating "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory" (See image here: http://imgur.com/nWgmC). The imaging finishes fine, even with this message appearing. Is anyone else seeing this, or can anyone give me pointers on where to look for whats causing this? I am NetBooting to a 10.6.8 server which is hosting the Casper Lion NetBoot image. I haven't got the 'Diskless' box ticked for this NetBoot image and under 'Select where to put client data' I have both 'Images' and 'Client Data' ticked for the local hard drive. The NetBoot server has plenty of free disk space and memory while the process is running. Regards Patrick Lawrence <ATT00001..c>

You'll need to expand the size of your NetBoot.dmg file.

hdiutil resize -size xxGB <NetBoot.dmg file>

j
---
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

I will have to try this, but I have 10.7.2 netboot working from a 10.6.8 server, I just use disk utility to add a spaceholder.dmg that I create and put in the home directory of the auto login users home then I can delete that and have an instant 50GB or how ever much space I want.

--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

Well, I guess I'm wrong, which is most likely the case, or Apple changed
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Ness, Todd <todd.ness at hp.com> wrote:
something, because if memory serves me correctly, you could not create a
NetBoot image that was a higher OS level than the server hosting the image. So, like I said in my earlier email, if my server was running 10.6.x my
NetBoot image could not be 10.7.x.

At least that's how I remember it. And I'm not talking about what image
Casper lays down on the machine, just the OS version in the NetBoot image.

I stand corrected.

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

you are correct, I create it on a 10.7 server but I save it to the 10.6 server that has been running netboot, turning on netboot on the 10.7 server with the the 10.6 server seemed to not be very fruitful and the problems I was having with vpn on 10.7, I wasted no more time on it and just copied the file over to the other server and it seemed to work there, so that’s the current process.
--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

You do need to create the NetBoot image on a system running a comparable
On 10/6/11 9:25 AM, "Steve Wood" <swood at integer.com> wrote:
OS, however, once that image is made you can host it on most versions of
Mac OS X Server. I have a 10.6 system hosting both 10.5 and 10.6 NetBoot
images. I wouldn't be surprised it would handle 10.7 as well. The NetBoot
server doesn't really care.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

NetBoot is basically a fork of DHCP. The underlying code is basic enough to have not changed much in years. NetBoot servers can be various versions of OS X Server, or even Linux if you are up for a wee challenge.

The platform-specific issue is in the creation of the .nbi (NetBoot Image) folder. This has all of the booter files as well as actual operating system built for network distribution. The tools used to make disk images change within each version of OS X, so a Lion image needs to be made from another system running Lion. Snow Leopard images need to be built on Snow systems, etc.

Once that lion image is built using an existing lion system (a bit of a bootstrapping issue there, to be sure) it can be hosted on basically any version of NetBoot server.

At least, that is expected behavior as of now. Things likely might change in the future.

Cheers, - D

Sent from my Tricorder. ?

Can you try creating the NetBoot manually? I.e not using Automator.

Maybe for now to test, just boot into a lion OS. Create root account. Then set it to auto login with imaging launching.

If that works, then it's the Automator action. (possibly).

Regards,

Ben.

That is how I created them. I'll go the other direction soon and create one w/ automator and see how it compares.

Brian
--
Brian Goldstein
Singer Consulting, Inc.
brian at randsinger.com
888.222.2959 x2103

For general support inquiries please email support at randsinger.com

Sorry. My reply was more to Patrick the OP.

Regards,

Ben.

I added an extra 10GB to the size of the NetBoot.dmg file, but the error still appears. It doesn't prevent the imaging process from completing, so I guess its not really an issue. I mainly wanted to see if others were experiencing this or if it is something I should be concerned about.

Patrick

I am experiencing this issue as well. Imaging completes without any issues but it is weird to see this message when first logging into the netboot environment.

Jason Butler
Mac Admin - Client Systems
Information Services
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
jason.butler at cchmc.org
513.803.6504

I bury a big spaceholder file on my NBI and then remove it when I login stops the errors, gives me room to test package installs on the NBI etc.
--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

So what is best?

To add about 10GB to your netboot.dmg file using hdiutil resize -size xxGB
<NetBoot.dmg file>

Or to add a space holder file!?

Thanks
Steve

I never figured out how to resize the DMG after Leopard, so this is what
works for me, it makes no difference either way as far as I can tell, if
the resize command shared on the list really works, it would be a user
preference I would think. but this way I don't have to remember to grow
the disk image its just there. but I do have to remember to remove the
space holder. so that might be inconvenient for some.
-- Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

Why does this error keep on coming up? Has anyone fixed this? I increased the size, added another 10GB and still I get this error.

Any idea how to fix this?

Cheers

To expand on this same issue… how long on average, is it taking for your imaging process to complete? On 10.6.x the OS, Office, and a handful of other small packages took about 22 minutes… I am at 1hr and 10 minutes and the OS still is not done yet!

Thank you
Steve

same here

On average it would take 30min for everything under 10.6.x now its 1.5+ hours and I just can't wait!

With deploy studio the same image from instaDMG is about 18min

There is something wrong!

I just created my first 10.7.x netboot environment, and am getting this out of space error (as well as iCloud popping up).

How did you guys get around the out of space error? I see earlier that adding to the Netboot image file size didn't help everyone.

@CasperSally in NetBoot service on your server just check mark diskless

@rpotvin, thanks but I already selected diskless