Automated deployment process and net boot

[jmercier]

Hi... we are moving all our things from Deploystudio to casper... i had the jumpstart a year ago... and for some reason we are starting only now to configure everything...

a few things are going out of my mind now... basically at the end, we want the ability to netboot machines, and they reimage automatically and right after packages and scripts installs....

for packages, scripts and policies, i don't have any problems with that... where i have problem is figure out all the pre imaging process...

What kind of netboot to create, how to create it (because mine right now not working properly), and how to tell the netboot to go and get the casper information so it starts reimaging right away automatically...

i have a netboot right now that starts.... but as soon as i login with admin account, screen stays grey and nothing...

tried different things in the discussions section... looks like im missing something... i really feel stupid because i work with mac for lot of years... im use to all this... but something does not get into my mind....

[stevewood · Accepted solution]

If you follow the steps in the two articles below, you should have yourself an NBI that will boot directly into Casper Imaging:

Creating a Minimal OS: http://goo.gl/d5bC9

Creating a NetBoot Image: http://goo.gl/awiMg

Basically, when creating your Minimal OS that you'll use to create the NetBoot Image (NBI), you want to enable the root user and set the OS to automatically login to that user. Set Casper Imaging to start automatically, and you've got the basics for what you want to do.

After you've done all of that and have a functioning NBI, in order for the machine you are booting to automatically image, you either need a Pre-Stage configuration (if the machine has never been in the JSS or has been deleted), or you need to setup Auto-Run data for that machine.

Hope that helps, and hope it makes sense.

Steve

[stevewood · Accepted solution]

If you follow the steps in the two articles below, you should have yourself an NBI that will boot directly into Casper Imaging:

Creating a Minimal OS: http://goo.gl/d5bC9

Creating a NetBoot Image: http://goo.gl/awiMg

Basically, when creating your Minimal OS that you'll use to create the NetBoot Image (NBI), you want to enable the root user and set the OS to automatically login to that user. Set Casper Imaging to start automatically, and you've got the basics for what you want to do.

After you've done all of that and have a functioning NBI, in order for the machine you are booting to automatically image, you either need a Pre-Stage configuration (if the machine has never been in the JSS or has been deleted), or you need to setup Auto-Run data for that machine.

Hope that helps, and hope it makes sense.

Steve

[mm2270 · Accepted solution]

If you're talking about new Macs out of the box, you'd need to look at using Pre-Stage Imaging, located under the Management tab in your JSS. You can set up a process where any Macs that fall into a particular scope will image automatically when they Netboot into your imaging Netboot setup. The scope can be Network Segments, MAC addresses or Serial Numbers.

If on the other hand you're talking about Macs already in your inventory, you can look at setting up the Auto Run settings to image them the next time they Netboot into your imaging setup.

Both of the above processes (Pre-Stage and Auto Run) are explained in more detail in the full Administrator's guide, so check there for more.

Optionally, you can look at pre-creating computer records for any Macs in your JSS using something like the JSS Computer Importer tool found on the Casper SDK download. That tool works to create records waiting to be filled in with actual computer inventory, but is a bit tricky to get right, and you need to have a lot of information about those Macs to even enter them in with it anyway. They'd still need to get imaged using something like AutoRun at that point, so you'd likely be better off just using Pre-Stage or from the get-go, or Auto Run for anything already there.

[jmercier]

thanks for the answer... and i guess as soon as the casper imaging starts automatically... thats when all the processes starts by them selves ?

[mm2270]

If its configured that way, yes. There are some spots where you need to enable it to automatically start imaging when the Casper Imaging application opens and also supply credentials it can use, or else it will sit there waiting for someone to enter a username/password to authenticate back to the JSS with.

And finally, as stevewood mentions, you'll want to be sure your NetBoot image is doing several things, a) auto logging in as the root user, b) auto launching Casper Imaging. Those settings along with the rest of the setup will allow it to automatically begin imaging unattended.

[jmercier]

Thanks a lot....