Casper Admin 9.81 Could not mount distribution point

[#1]

Hi all,

I am a newbie to Casper and I am having a real problem with Casper Admin. For some reason it won't mount the distribution point when loading and I have no idea why. The distribution point is on a Windows file server, in the root and shared via SMB.
I can mount the DP with both the r/w and r/o accounts that have permissions on the share and they both work fine as does my own LDAP account which I also use to log into JSS. I have also checked the details for the DP in JSS and they are all correct and I have even tried some of the suggestions on this board such as removing the workgroup on the File Sharing tab, changing the SMB port from 139 to 445, and also using the IP address of the server the share instead of the FQDN. There are no spaces or special characters in the user accounts or passwords for the share. I have also re-created the distribution point and still have the same issues. I can't find anything in the logs about this either. I am now utterly stumped as I can't import new packages into Casper Admin without it being able to access the DP. If anyone has any more ideas of what to check then please let me know.

[Chris]

Did you make sure the DP is not already mounted before opening Casper Admin?

[#3]

I did indeed. I've also setup debugging on the Casper Admin app courtesy of another discussion on this board and got the following from the debugging log:

02/12/2016 14:02:48 - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Running Simple Shell Command:
'/Applications/Casper Suite/Casper Admin.app/Contents/Support/jamf' mount -type smb -server '*' -workgroup '' -share 'CASPER' -username 'Casper.User' -passhash '%eb%c6%c7%c5%c4%ce%9b%98%99'

02/12/2016 14:02:51 - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple Shell Result:
Mounting to /Volumes/CASPER...
There was an error mounting the file server . Will attempt again.
Mounting to /Volumes/CASPER...
There was an error mounting the file server . Giving up.

02/12/2016 14:02:55 - The master distribution point (Software) could not be mounted.

[mpermann · Accepted solution]

@Chains what OS is installed on the computer you are attempting to open Casper Admin on? If it's macOS 10.12.x that may be your problem. I'm pretty sure you need a newer version of Casper Admin to be compatible with macOS 10.12. If you have a computer with Mac OS 10.11.6 or older give Casper Admin a shot on that to see if it works properly.

[tdclark]

@mpermann and @Chains We had the same problem with 9.82 and 10.12.x. You'll probably need to get to at least 9.93 before you can use Casper Admin with Sierra. One thing I did as a work around is create a 10.11 VM and use that for any CasperAdmin needs until we upgraded a few weeks ago.

[#6]

@tdclark It is indeed the fact that I am on 10.12, as running Casper Admin on an El Capitan Mac works perfectly. luckily is due to the fact I've only just started and its only a couple of the IT Macs that have been updated to Sierra we are going to re-image them with El Capitan. Once the organisation wants to go ahead with an upgrade to Sierra, if they do, then we'll go ahead with updating Casper, but hopefully I'll have a while before that happens to learn Casper in a bit more detail.

[kerouak]

strange indeed!

I'm running 2 versions of Casper Admin successfully on a Sierra based mac.

I have had this issue before.

Although the Volume may not show on the desktop, it may still exist...

I basically ran diskutil unmount via terminal to be sure and found that this was successful.
G'Luck!