Lion Netboot - Startup disk has no more space available

-removed double post

I booted to my 10.7.3 netboot and in disk utility I can't unmount the drive so it appears not to be diskless, even though I have that box checked on the server.

I even recreated the netboot environment from scratch but same issue.

If anyone has any other suggestions of what to try I'd appreciate it. So frustrating. I mis netinstall.

Hi @CasperSally
I'd suggest the following:

Go into "Server Admin"

Go into "Access"

Go into "Services"

Highlight "AFP" and choose "Allow All Users and Groups" and apply this, then try NetBooting again.

Diskless NetBoot uses a "NetBoot" user (as well as attempting to use Guest) to connect via AFP to use the NetBootClients share point, and at present I'd suggest this user is restricted

A better policy longterm is to "Allow" all the Netboot and Guest system users on the system into that section.

@dcolville - appreciate the response. My server was already set for all users and groups (all it does, right now, is Netboot). Such a frustrating problem. Going to try to start fresh a 3rd time.

I'm still having trouble creating a 10.7.3 diskless netboot image.

I started completely over and followed this step by step.

I turned on our newest hardware, a macbook air, ran combo update and followed the rest of the steps here

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/article.html?id=63

Once I had the composer/DMG OS file, I took it over to an imac running lion 'server' and ran the system image utility (without the casper resource netboot post action script since I did these steps on the base image already).

Same issue when netbooting, the statup volume out of space error, confirmed in disk utility can't unmount Macintosh HD. I'm pretty frustrated and have been spinning my wheels on this... this is the 4th netboot image I've tried to create now.

I've tried stopping/starting netboot as well as propogate of permissions. Diskless and Client Data are both checked in my netboot settings.

ah finally reread the thread and realized dcolville was right. My AFP permissings were restricted (I was looking at the whole server access before, not specific to AFP).

At the time I set up the server, this was set for just the casper install/admin account access because I didn't want students to have AFP access to the dist point also hosted on the box.

Is there a way to have both, diskless but restricted AFP access to distribution point hosted on same box? If not, may be time to look into the netboot appliance.

Hi Sally,
(Edited my post for clarity)

First suggestion is to:

Go into Server Admin,

In Server Admin's "Preferences' section (part of Server Admin menu), be sure to enable "Show System Accounts in Users and Groups Browser"

Once this is set - go into Server Admin - Settings - Access, and add all users who have a "Netboot" username - netboot100 up to netboot150, plus whichever groups *should* have access rights to the server - so in the end you should have net boot 100-150, plus your casper install/admin account access users or groups.

Give that a go - I've tracked this back on a test system and the only user accounts listed were those as above - I have seen some instances where "guest" rights are required, but I don't' believe this to be the case here.

10.7.3 server at least allows you to see the list of "AFP client connections" in Server.app during a NetBoot session - so check this list for any additional user accounts you might be using during the process.

Had this problem too when I was creating them on a MacBookPro2,2. When creating them on a MacPro1,1, no problem. Its fine to use these old timers, as long as mindful of when new machines have come out and the last OS update. If Apple were to release a new machine today, then will have to use the new hardware until 10.7.4 is released. Then any model should be fine since it should have the new support incorporated (however, there are exceptions to that too... if a new OS build comes out within a relatively short period of time as new hardware, then the new OS stuff may not be in there, so would still have to use the special new hardware builds until 10.7.5. This happened last year with some flavor of 10.6).

The way I create the NBIs (10.6 & 10.7):
- Create The Perfect Image on the build machine. - pmset hibernatemode 0
- launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
- Reboot to TDM and connect to another Mac. - Delete: /var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_i386 & dyld_shared_cache_x86_64
- Delete: /var/vm/sleepimage (if it exists). - Build the NBI (we use System Image Utility).
- Use hdiutil to resize the DMG (I usually crank it up a few extra GB). See above posts for syntax.
- Copy the NBI folder to the NetBoot server & configure it to be enabled.

Haven't tried the MBA, but expect may be some problems unless the image takes into account en0/en1 differences with its ethernet interface.

If the hibernation isn't turned off, then it wants to make a file of the size of RAM. If you leave that file in place, then you waste space, plus if you boot a machine with more RAM than the machine where you created the NBI image, then more problems.

This is what works for us. Not going to guarantee it'll work elsewhere, since there seems to also be a little black magic mixed in there.

Our main NetBoot server is 10.4.11. Have some others at various levels of 10.6.x and all work fine for serving images of any version.

After cruising along for about a week with our 10.7.3 Netboot, all of a sudden some strange things are happening.

Our larger non compiled images aren't completing properly. No imaging errors in JSS, but they reboot to apple gray screen with spinning circle. While troubleshooting, I happened to notice on one of the attempts I got 'out of space' error again (ugh!).

I can confirm I am diskless (my compiled images are coming down block copy, I can unmount the HD).

Is this a sign maybe I need to run "hdiutil resize -size xxGB
<NetBoot.dmg file>"? I'm going to try that next, as I'm not sure what else to try.

I still miss Netinstall!

i put a large empty dmg called spaceholder in my netboot images, so i can do installation testing of things like adobe cs so i just remove that and it stops the error messages.