BSDpy and Legacy MacBooks

[zinkotheclown]

The techs at my organization have been using the Netboot/NetSUS appliance for netbooting. One of the main gripes about this solution is that it's only able to advertise one NBI at a time unlike Mac OS X server.

I recently discovered BSDpy and it's able to broadcast more than one NBI. I've tested it on a VM and it seems to work well with NBI's with a modified rc.netboot file but if you use a NBI that does not have a modded rc.netboot file, Casper Imaging will skip to the end of the configuration without installing the packages.

We have a lot of legacy Macs that are unable to boot to NBI's that have the modded rc.netboot file, thus making BSDpy useless for our organization.

Before I lose all hope in BSDpy, I am wondering how other organizations are coping with the older legacy Macs in terms of imaging.

[bentoms]

@dlee_pausd BSDPy supports NetInstall images & not NetBoot Images as it cannot (currently) hold the AFP shadow cache for NetBoot Images.

I promised @Bruienne I'd look at it.. but haven't figured it out yet.

[Josh_Smith]

@bentoms

Hi Ben,

That sounds like good info that I need to know since I'm just about to start playing with BSDPy....but I am a bit dense in the various NetBoot/Install/Restore technologies. Could you explain what that means for Capser Imaging with BSDPy?

It sounds like the original poster indicates Casper Imaging and BSDPy works for newer Macs...but your comment makes me question that. Ideally I would use BSDPy to boot from an image created by AutoDMG and your AutoCasperNBI, then image with Casper Imaging....any chance that will work?

[activitymonitor]

I have used BSDPy with MacBook1,1's. By 'legacy' do you mean PPC?

What size RAMdisk are you specifying in your rc.netboot? If these machines only have 1gb of ram, you would need to go down to a 256mb RAMdisk.

[zinkotheclown]

@activitymonitor By legacy, I meant the white MacBooks from 2006-early 2009 with 1 gb ram.

How would you define the RAMdisk size in rc.netboot?

[bentoms]

@Josh.Smith AutoCasperNBI images with the rc.netboot option ticked should work.. current version creates a 2GB RAM disk.. So your Mac will need more than 2GB RAM to boot off of it. I am changing that to 1GB in the next release.

Should be fine, I've overcomplicated.

@dlee_pausd How did you modify the rc.netboot? This page should help..

You can also check this.

Try with the resize of: 2097152.

BUT what OS is the NBI?

You might need to make sure that your Macs meet the system requirements.

[Bruienne]

I'm taking a look at the requirements to add support for the shadow file option to BSDPy. Standard behavior attempts either AFP or NFS with some default user login data. For S&G someone might try enabling an NFS or AFP share on the same host as their BDSPy server and creating a "NetBootClientsN" sharepoint where N is a number from 0-9 (start with 0) and booting from a diskless-enabled NBI to see what happens. That might be all that's required without any help from BSDPy since most of Apple's bsdpd code deals with creating AFP shares and permissions on them without any activity in providing the client with any additional info.

Curious to hear how that goes.

Thanks,
Pepijn.

[zinkotheclown]

@bentoms I didn't modify the rc.netboot as I used the one generated by AutoCasperNBI which would explain why the 1 gb Macs had issues booting to it. This NBI is a 10.7 image for the older Macs with 1 gb of RAM. I have a NBI without the rc.netboot and those older Macs can boot to that but some crash during imaging.

I will modify the rc.netboot file to the 1gb specification.

[calumhunter]

@dlee_pausd 1gb ram? Lion system requirements are for 2GB. Perhaps you can use this as an excuse to retire these devices?

Lion System Requirements

Hmm if they have only 1gb of ram, and you use 1gb of ram to create a ram disk, how much ram is left over to boot the system?

I'm not sure how much space is required for a ram disk, perhaps you could create a smaller 256Mb ram disk as mentioned above.

But really 9 year old machines? almost better off with pen and paper

[zinkotheclown]

@calumhunter You're right, 10.7 has no business on these devices but this a public school district, and teachers are always scrounging for an extra computer here and there and we are prohibited from installing 10.6 as Apple is no longer providing security updates for it.

However, in most cases we had been able to install 10.7 on 1 gb MacBooks using Deploy Studio. With Casper Imaging, I am suggesting just a OS install so it doesn't run out of memory and having the rest of the apps deployed via a policy.

@bentoms I did get an older Mac to boot from a 10.7 AutoCasperNBI from BSDpy with the lower ramdisk size of 2097152. However, imaging froze as soon as I got the message regarding memory shortage. This may just be a case of the device not meeting 10.7's requirements.

[Josh_Smith]

@dlee_pausd Apple isn't supplying Security Updates for 10.7 either (haven't since 10.10 came out), and will in all likelihood stop patching 10.8 in when Picard (10.11) is released. Although if you consider Rootpipe.....they really only patch 10.10 now.

Non-IT people tend not to understand how much extra strain supporting 10+ years worth of hardware/software can put on an Admin. The security angle may be your best bet at setting a more realistic hardware/software lifecycle policy and getting it funded.....good luck!

[gregneagle]

However, in most cases we had been able to install 10.7 on 1 gb MacBooks using Deploy Studio.

So why not continue to use Deploy Studio for that purpose?

-Greg

[calumhunter]

Although if you consider Rootpipe.....they really only patch 10.10 now.

And if you follow the OSX Reverser then they haven't really patched 10.10 either

+1 on DeployStudio if that still works for you then just drop a quickadd package and maybe a trigger script to fire off some policies to get you set up

[zinkotheclown]

@gregneagle @calumhunter We have become so dedicated on Casper and with tools like AutoCasperNBI, it seemed like a good time to try to make it work.

But yes, in certain situations, Deploy Studio does seem to be a good alternative to Casper Imaging.

[calumhunter]

You can still use Casper with DeployStudio....

All you are doing is instead of using a netboot image with Casper Imaging to put an image on the machine to deploy configs, you use a netboot image with DeployStudio to put an image and then a quickadd package to enroll the machine into Casper, then you might run a first boot script which triggers a policy or multiple policies in order to get your machine configured as needed. This is pretty common practice I believe, since Casper Imaging has a rather checkered history...

I'm guessing that because DeployStudio's NetInstall dmg is based off the recovery HD it is much smaller and has less items loading in to RAM. Where as AutoCasperNBI uses a full OS. Perhaps the issue is that the AutoCasperNBI created NetBoot image simply uses too much RAM and that is why your machine is crashing and giving you insufficient memory errors.

But again with only 1gb ram running 10.7. What are they actually going to be able to achieve on those machines?
Interesting that you say you can't use 10.6 because its not receiving patches from Apple. Yet Lion hasn't received any security updates since September 2014. Basically once 10.10 was released (october 2014), Lion support was dropped completely.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201222

[bentoms]

@gregneagle & @calumhunter There are a ew threads on NetBoot that I've been working through with @dlee_pausd.

Seems like AutoCasperNBI's NBI creating method differs enough from DS's to cause an issue.

But, tbh.. This is also the 1st time AFAIK AutoCasperNBI's have been used with as little as 1GB RAM.

I'll see what more I can do with AutoCasperNBI.. But at some point.. If the specs are below the OS we're trying to run.. Not much I can do.

[zinkotheclown]

Thanks for all the input. I didn't realize 10.7 wasn't supported by Apple anymore. I will bring this up and maybe this will provide real impetus to rid us of these MacBooks.

[bpavlov]

Rule of thumb seems to be is current + 2.