OT - Loaner Laptops

@Chris_Hafner I saw AutoNBI but frankly it's overkill for my needs (I don't even have the prerequisites.) Looks powerful though. I just have a simple need that I would think a lot of others must have: I create a USB boot drive that contains a bunch of utilities for Mac troubleshooting and diagnostics. When I try to use System Image Utility with that drive as Source, and create a NetBoot image, it fails with "Error 2" (whatever that means.) Looking at the SUI log in Console, I see this in the middle where it fails:

Create NetBoot Image
Initiating NetBoot from installed volume.
created: /SCRATCH/TEST_NetBoot.nbi/NetBoot.dmg
update_dyld_shared_cache failed: /private/tmp/mnt.VYpQQ6KB/var/db/dyld/shared_region_roots/ does not exist, errno=2
Execution of 'createNetBoot.sh' failed. Cleaning up.

I'm probably missing something in how the Source volume must be created, but I can't find much documentation suggesting how it needs to be set up (lots of documentation for NetInstalls)

@yeldarb I'll update the pre-reqs.. but it can be used to create a Restorable DMG that can then be restored to a USB.

The "createNetBoot.sh" mentioned in the error is actually the script that's mentioned as the secret sauce.

Not sure what you mean Secret Sauce. I did try the suggestion mentioned in the Jan 7, 2015 12:09pm post here
https://discussions.apple.com/message/27214817#27214817
namely to edit the createRestoreFromSources.sh
line which has the 456MB padding and increase it to 2048

# Convert to MB, rounding up, and add 456MB (128+200+128)for OS level stuff...
imageSize=$(($(($(($imageSize+1023))/1024))+2048))

didn't seem to help.

To be clear, my goal isn't to create a Restorable DMG, it's to create a NetBoot that I can put on our NetBoot server, and boot that over the network to do troubleshooting instead of needing to use the USB drive. Our server already has many NetInstallers and they work fine.

@yeldarb I've seen that error crop up from time to time in the past, generally on early mavericks images. What is your specific process for creating the NBI (How do you setup your base image and capture it with SIU, etc.) That said, I'm not sure what you mean by AutoNBI being overkill. It's like driving an automatic as opposed to a stick. Maybe you're used to the stick. In any event, this looks like an error on the unit your using as the base for your NBI. Without knowing more the only suggestion I can make straight away is to refresh your dyld cache. try the following command on the target machine

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

and see if that helps. Again, knowing your specific process with software and OS versions would be super helpful here.

@yeldarb I think what @bentoms was trying to say was that AutoCasperNBI uses the same scripts to create a .nbi as does SIU. AutoCasperNBI just makes the process a heck of a lot more stable and more easily replicated from one image to another.

@yeldarb When I said "Secret Sauce" I had hyperlinked to something explaining it: https://macmule.com/autocaspernbi/#Secret_Sauce

I'm confused to as what you want to do, one minute you're saying that you don't have the pre-requisites for AutoCasperNBI.. which are a NetBoot server.. Next post you're saying you have an NetBoot server...

AutoCasperNBI was built to simplify the process? what's missing?

My apologies, I am working in several different forums and apparently I confused AutoCasperNBI with something else called AutoNBI, which does have more interesting prerequisites.

In any case, the fault seems to be in the Secret Sauce which is not going to be different if I use another tool that relies on those scripts... I see what you mean now about the Sauce.

My point is that my definition of "Simplest" would be for the Apple tool to just work. I want to understand why it doesn't. One thing I came across: others seem to have noticed that whenever capturing using SUI from an SSD drive, it tends to fail. In my case right now, all my Macs have SSD! So I guess I need to go find one that doesn't, or stick this USB boot drive image onto an actual hard drive, and try SUI from that...

(I hate Windows but I have to say that every time I dig into NetBoot stuff, I'm reminded how much easier it is to get something working PXE booting other operating systems etc.)

Well, in that case, creating a .NBI with AutoCasperNBI using an installer captures through AutoDMG would solve your problem simply because your dealing with software .dmgs and .pkgs. No additional computers required, SSD or no!

OH, and it's also pretty simple to add the diagnostic tools as well. Drop their packages in AutoDMG when creating your OS, prior to running it through AutoCasperNBI. Piece of cake!

Not a piece of cake if some of the diagnostic tools aren't .pkg'd. I'm not dealing with sofware .dmgs and .pkgs (that wasn't my original question.)
I understand what you're saying, nobody builds from "perfect masters" anymore... but rather layers from packages... blah blah. However in this case it's a little different, not making a perfect master, but a USB boot troubleshooting drive that has been perfected by several people. External boot drives are still very useful even in this day of recovery partitions and Internet Recovery etc. Especially now that there is real Mac malware screwing up students' Macs. I just want to be able to NetBoot the same thing I have on a USB drive (it's an SSD USB drive.)

Fair enough. I guess your off to find a non SSD drive then. That said, you could probably try using composer or something like CCC to capture a .dmg from your USB drive and go that way.

Quick additional question. Are you a JAMF customer>? I only ask because I don't want to make recommendations that require the suite if you're not. I'm just wondering why the creating of the USB drive itself isn't automated. Particularly if it's setup is picture perfect for your needs. Being able to automate the deployment of new drives, update packages as necessary and then turn those into .nbi's on demand seems like something that might help. Again, I'm not quite sure what you're doing in specific or what you normally use.

P.S. If by chance you ARE using the casper suite, the present malware items out there are super simple to deal with either automatically or manually via "Self-Service" without the need for diagnostic drives and .nbis. Again, I'm sure you're using them for other things as well. I'm just trying to bring this all around full circle.

Please know that we're guessing a lot here about your situation and solutions to try helping out ;-) We tend to want to be a helpful bunch!

Yes I'm very grateful for the help and suggestions... now I have a bunch of possibilities to work through!

So now that the days of imaging are just about done, what are people doing for these loaner laptops? For the people who "forget to bring theirs into work" type situations. Ideally, the laptop is basically fully set up and ready to go with a bunch of commonly used applications. Do you enroll them into Jamf with generic accounts? Or do you do something else? We are also an Active Directory house.