NetBoot 10.9 and Late 2013 hardware

Where was the net boot image pulled from? As of right now, Mavericks is forked (as evidenced by the different build versions you've posted), so I'm guessing there isn't a single 10.9 image that will boot all 10.9 compatible Macs. I've made a net boot image from an App Store Mavericks (build 13A603). It's working fine for all older Macs, just not for any Late 2013 models. This has sort of become typical for every OS X update after new product launches. Usually the next update (i.e., 9.1) will be good for all models, and I'll create a net boot image out of that (the current 10.9 one I'm using is for testing).

The weird thing you're experiencing is going from the netboot.dmg to an older Mac and that working. Not what I'd expect. But let's start with some info: where was the net boot image pulled from? What build is it?

Michael

I used System Image Utility (10.9 server) to capture the image form a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013). It's build 13A3017 with kernel 13.0.2. I'm still experimenting with what build works which models. I'm really hoping to not need to distribute multiple netboot images.

I'm really hoping to not need to distribute multiple netboot images.

@Sonic84 you may need to wait until 10.9.1 then. :(

I'm not surprised older models don't boot to the image from the new model. This summer the MacBook Airs came out with a special build of 10.8.4, so they couldn't netboot to our 10.8.4 netboot image. Nor could older machines boot to an image of the MacBook Air's "special" 10.8.4. When 10.8.5 was released, it had only one build number for all models. So we made our netboot image from that. Generally, these days, all new models ship with a model-specific build number that can't be used with any other model. Us IT folk then wait for the next update which levels everything out.

My actual advice:

Best practice, imho, is not creating a production netboot image until a model-spanning build number is out. I really don't think it's worth the headache of managing netboot images and forked OSes. Us now, for example, we have an App Store 10.9 netboot image for all models but Late 2013. The few Late 2013 machines we picked up, we're just not netbooting them. In the case of imaging, we're leaving the current OS on (i.e., the "special" build) and just applying the rest of our setup via policies/Casper Remote.

In short:

I don't think you're going to get a working netboot image of 10.9 for all the new models and the older ones. You'll have to wait until 10.9.1.

@bentoms

You put it so succinctly...

@tuinte it's rare that I do!

Agreed with everyone else...the easiest way is to wait until a unifying build of 10.9 comes out. That being said...with the special 10.8.4 build that shipped on MacBook Airs (and unneeded pressure from users here), I had to get an image regardless of what I wanted. I used this post of Rich Trouton's to capture the hardware specific build:

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/downloading-lion-os-installers-for-your-specific-mac-model/

I just did this... use Rich Trouton's method of capturing the InstallESD.dmg... (as mentioned by blackholemac) and then just skip to this article (Option 2 is easy) creating the build in disk utility.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install-drive.html

Working great. :)

-lauren

Update: I can do that, but I cannot for the life of me make a Netboot image of build 13A2093... anyone have any luck?

Lauren,

I have been able to create a net boot of 10.9 13A2093 for the new MBPs. I had a heck of a time getting it working as well. Turns out that you have to use disk image utility from the EXACT same build of mavericks that you are capturing. I actually setup the computer, captured with composer on a different build of Mavericks (13A603), copied the files back to the same computer that I just captured, and ran disk image utility from there.

Also, the name of the netboot partition cannot be the same name as your current booted partition (e.g. if you boot to macintosh HD, your partition name can't be that). theres already a post on jamfnation about this:
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=8761

We are having this problem now with what we thought was a manually unified OS 10.9.1, and also with the new 10.9.2 full install. Anyone else seeing netboot problems with older hardware only?

@ronb

Looks like you're having the issue mentioned here:
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=9836
There are some scripts that should help you out here:
http://blog.designed79.co.uk/?p=1807

you were correct Josh_S, that script did the trick for us!!! Thanks