AutoCasperNBI - pre-release - testers needed

Happy to help you, help me!

really like AutoCasper NBI!

On it like butter on toast.

Happy to test. AutoCasperNBI has been great.

Captial T Testing!

I would love to help! Love the product!

NP. My first nbi is already 3GB smaller!

Wow, thanks all!

I'm hoping it's semi-unremarkable & just works. :)

I'm in a good position to help test this time round!

So any issues? @Bendelaat, @emilykausalik, @thomasC, @RossDrummond, @dgreening, @davidhiggs, @Chris_Hafner

I've added some myself on Github, but wanted to see if anymore were found.

I noticed some odd text/display things but nothing impactful use-wise.

Oh, and I got this:

Not exactly sure what that means.

@emilykausalik That's from a change that was introduced starting in 10.9.x, where third-party kernel extensions now need to be signed. There's more info on this available from here:

https://pikeralpha.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/kext-requirements-for-os-x-10-9-mavericks/

@emilykausalik You still got that with the pre-release?

Hey Ben, sorry I've been a bit dark out here. I was testing your system against some beta versions of stuff thats ended up in the recently released 9.7 version of the Suite. I am rebuilding all to re-test against 9.7 this evening and this afternoon. The only thing I'll say is that your system worked rather well under those betas.

I've built three images so far without issue:

10.10.2 for Most of our Macs
10.10.2 for the 2015 Air
10.10.3 Beta for All Macs

All three were created without issue and have worked flawlessly.

For your data, I select the options to shrink the image, modify the rc.netboot file, set a Desktop image and set user/password for VNC/ARD. I also have a package that erases the LaunchAgent to auto-launch Casper Imaging and installs a small AppleScript app for erasing encrypted volumes. And, I've tested this with both AutoDMG and Composer-created base OS images. Thanks.

@Chris_Hafner & @bmarks thanks guys!

no problems here! size reduction of about ~3GB. JSS 9.64. Using autodmg, played with 10.10.2 and 10.10.3 dev build. running from a 10.7.5 netboot server about to go into retirement. Thanks for the good work!

@davidhiggs Don't run JSS 9.64, it was recalled, upgrade to 9.65 ASAP.

Alright. No problems other than some of GUI behavioral stuff when creating the .NBI (Spinning ball and sluggish responsiveness). That said, it works brilliantly with the settings I was using. (no modified rc.netboot, no Restorable DMG, no Simple Finder and no additional packages) I did set a custom background, enabled ARD but NOT VNC

Compiled 10.10.2 .nbi from a 10.10.2 iMac for JSS v9.7 (in-production). Unit is distributing a new base image captured with Composer 9.7 (multi partition which includes recovery partition). This is working on the full range of units we support but I haven't tested them against any of the 2015 devices.

For most of my tests, the .nbis are coming out at about 8.45 to 8.47 gigs.

@bentoms I'm still manually adding 10 more GBs to my NBIs using the hdutil command. Is this no longer necessary?

@davidhiggs thanks for the feedback. Mind that 9.64 though.

@Chris_Hafner thanks too! The beachballing is expected. If it was written in a multi-threaded language & not Applescript, then it could've been avoided!

@spraguga With the release version, you could specify the size to expand in AutoCasperNBI.

With the prerelease, the OS.dmg should be set to 64GB. So should be no need to expand post creating the NBI. Please test & advise.

@bentoms That's pretty much what I figured. I remembered that you used a number of things including AppleScript to get this together. It's pretty darned good and rather mindless. Anything that you'd specifically like checked?

@Chris_Hafner Nothjng special to check. Other than it works. The end NBI is now a sparseimage & not a DMG, which is a huge difference. If it's still working, then awesome!

AutoCasperNBI is AppleScript Objective-C for the GUI etc. The heavy lifting is mainly bash, but there is a single line of perl in there too.

@bentoms Not a show stopper but if you choose the Casper Imaging app before the OS DMG then the JSS URL and NetBoot Required Settings will remain grayed out. To get around it you'll need to select the Casper Imaging app again.

FYI, built a 10.9.5 NBI on a 10.9.5 client using an AutoDMG OS image without issues : )

10.10.2 with 9.65 Imaging on 2015 Air, having an issue where system won't reboot once imaging is complete. Just quits out of imaging but doesn't restart.