Question

Thunderbolt Enet adapters and Casper Imaging

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
June 11, 2014
29 replies
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+11

znilsson
Valued Contributor

So we have set up a number of USB 3 flash drives with a basic Mavericks install and Casper Imaging set to auto-run. We use the flash drives to boot a new out of the box Mac, Casper Imaging auto-runs and we image the new Macs that way, which has been working great on the new Mac Pros which have actual Gigabit Ethernet ports.

When we get something like a Retina Macbook Pro or a Macbook Air that don't have ethernet ports, we've been trying to use Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapters. The issue is that when we boot from our Casper flash drives, Casper Imaging fails with an error saying it couldn't find the JSS, and this is despite the Mac actually connecting through the adapter and pulling a valid IP address from the router. That's the really confusing part, and I'm not sure what the problem is. Even after we have a valid IP if we try to run Casper Imaging we get the same communication error.

But the same flash drives booting Mac Pros that are connected to the same physical network cables on the same network don't have any problem connecting to the JSS and imaging.

Is there a known problem with trying to use casper imaging over a connection that's going through one of these adapters? We have not yet entered the MAC addresses of these adapters into the MAC address exclusion list in Casper, we're doing that tomorrow - but is that the problem, or is it something else?

Thanks for any help.

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+7

chlaird
Contributor
Forum|Forum|10 years ago
April 14, 2015

Experiencing this issue on 9.7 with MacbookPro12,1 machines fresh from the factory. The factory image is 10.10.2, forked build with support for force-touch trackpad

Our issue a bunch of little things rolled into one, so I have a pretty basic script to resolve them in order.

Time is wrong (it sets it to 00:01), so connection to JSS is rejected
Timezone is wrong, so updating the time still leaves it wrong
Ethernet adapter is not detected, so updating time fails, and connection to JSS fails
"Automatic" management/enrollment, and an added quickadd, still fail due to the above issues
If we check the "Force Apple Setup Assistant" box during imaging, it won't run the first-run script until AFTER the user creates their account, then it reboots, then it makes them create their account AGAIN, and then it brings them to their desktop, where they'll have two accounts. Buggy buggy buggy.

Fix:

Run a package that places quickadd.pkg in temp directory /var/empty ('Install on boot drive after imaging')
Run this script

#!/bin/sh

# detects the ethernet adapter
/usr/sbin/networksetup -detectnewhardware
sleep 30

# sets NTP to ntp.moravian.edu
/usr/sbin/systemsetup -setnetworktimeserver ntp.moravian.edu
sleep 2

# makes sure time is actually correct from NTP
/usr/sbin/ntpdate -u ntp.moravian.edu
sleep 2

# sets timezone to ET
/usr/sbin/systemsetup  -settimezone America/New_York 
sleep 2

# installs the quickadd
/usr/sbin/installer -pkg /var/empty/QuickAdd.pkg -target /
sleep 30

# deletes the temp directory
/bin/rmdir /var/empty
sleep 2

# manage again to be safe
/usr/sbin/jamf manage
sleep 2

# recon again to be safe
/usr/sbin/jamf recon
sleep 2

# force firstrun on reboot
/bin/rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

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+7

chlaird
Contributor
Forum|Forum|10 years ago
June 5, 2015

Anyone still having this problem, or have a stable fix for it? We imaged 600 macbook pros using thunderbolt ethernet adapters, and my above script. All of them appeared to be working after imaging, showed up in the JSS, etc, but upon reboot between 1/2 and 2/3 of them were broken with 'valid device certificate' errors. Only running the quickadd again fixes them.

So, if we don't run a quickadd during imaging, they never get managed at all
If we do run the quickadd during imaging, they have a high failure rate upon reboot.

Frustrating.

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C

+17

cwaldrip
Valued Contributor
Forum|Forum|10 years ago
August 8, 2015

We're just now seeing this I think. We've started (finally) imaging our fleet with Casper, and of course it's machines in NY (We're in Atlanta). Everything seems fine (if slow, it's ONLY an OC192 between here and there), but after First Run starts, it seems to hang. A restart of the machine and it runs through First Run like it should and all is good.

We contacted our Jamf support guy, and a little back and forth and he pointed me to this thread.

So, we're going to try a modified version of @chlaird's script. Just the three sections, we have QuickAdd.app set as an install during imaging.