Casper Imaging app is canceling the reboot process.

[shakim]

Reaching out to my fellow JAMF Admin's for some advice. I recently updated my Netboot image to 10.9.2 and my clients are netbooting fine and everything is working as normal. However, when imaging a Mac via Casper Imaging App and it loads all my payloads and etc. At the end of the process where it reboots into the newly imaged Mac Hard-drive, Casper Imaging App canceled the reboot process with the following error:
You haven't restarted because the application Casper Imaging failed to quit. To Try restarting again, quit Casper Imaging and Click Try again. If I force quit Casper Imaging, and reboot it gets locked up on the grey screen and I have to power off the Mac.

[jconte]

unfortunately it is a known issue that hasn't been resolved yet. it is a major inconvenience for us. we are currently not using the reboot option and restarting manually. i have been working with JAMF support but unfortunately there is no resolution. as soon as i get something i will post it.

[were_wulff]

Hey all,

I did some testing this morning/afternoon and was able to replicate the behavior we’re seeing when using 10.9 both as an imaging station and for Netbooting.

I’ve gone ahead and opened up a defect (D-006580) for this issue, so our development team is aware of it and can dig in to figure out if it’s something with Casper Imaging or if it’s an issue with Mavericks (they can also open a RADAR with Apple if it turns out to be a Mavericks issue).

In the mean time, the workarounds we’ve found to get by the behavior are:

1) Use 10.8 for imaging/netboot images.

2) Uncheck reboot automatically and reboot manually.

3) During testing, I found that, sometimes, the computer would reboot after a much longer than expected pause; the longest one of mine took was two minutes to reboot on its own.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your Technical Account Manager.

Thanks!

Amanda Wulff
JAMF Software Support

[spraguga]

Has anyone tried adding their own reboot shell script at the end of the imaging process instead of using Casper's checkbox?

[jkgrosh]

@amanda.wulff

Option 1 is not possible for newer machines that ship with 10.9 (like current gen MacBooks). they'll only boot from a 10.9 image.

[were_wulff]

@jkgrosh

It looks as though D-006580 was listed as fixed as of 9.31.
It's listed on page 12 of the release notes: http://resources.jamfsoftware.com/documents/products/documentation/Casper-Suite-9.31-Release-Notes.pdf

In the cases of computers that shipped with 10.9, we'll just need to go with option 2, or option 3 if updating to 9.31 is not something that you're able to do right now.

Thanks!

Amanda Wulff
JAMF Software Support

[jkgrosh]

We're still on 8.73, it will be quite a while before we get to 9.xx.

Does option 2 work?

Option 3, waiting, does not seem to help.

[were_wulff]

@jkgrosh

Since it’s not relying on Casper Imaging to do the reboot, it should work as you’d be unchecking the option to reboot and simply doing it manually once the imaging process is complete.

If you have additional questions about that particular defect or how to go about working around it, I’d recommend getting in touch with your Technical Account Manager.

Thanks!

Amanda Wulff
JAMF Software Support

[emily]

I'm not getting an error, it's just not rebooting after imaging. The Caper Imaging app closes but then… that's it. I reported it to my Account Manager so they can make a note of it. Looks like it's a known issue with 9.31.

[were_wulff]

@emilykausalik

Ah, so you're the one he'd mentioned! Your Account Manager stopped by my desk a little while ago to mention he had a customer seeing this behavior again in 9.31. We're currently testing it out in house to see if we can get it replicated and, if necessary, ping someone up in development to take a closer look.

Thanks for the heads up!

Amanda Wulff
JAMF Software Support

[emily]

@amanda.wulff Yep. I used to work in support so I know how useful it is to have reported incidents of odd behavior in new releases.

I don't remember this being an issue in 9.3, and really manually restarting isn't that big of a deal, so it seems low priority (to me, at least).

[jconte]

Unfortunately, it is still the same issue that has existed for the last 5 releases. It's extremely frustrating that we can no longer do unattended images. It's also quite frustrating that it is still outstanding. We don't sit in front of machines watching them build, most of the time we are assisting other users or working on projects. We lose many hours due to this defect. I get a version or 2 with the bug, but 5-6, C'mon JAMF.

[calum_rmit]

Have you tried using an older version of the casper imaging application?
We don't seem to have the issue here. we are using 10.9.2 netboot images with casper imaging version 9.21

[emily]

Yesterday was the first time I noticed that Casper Imaging actually did reboot after completing. The only difference was that I had finally upgraded the JSS to 9.31 (before I was running Casper Imaging 9.31 and the JSS was on 9.3). I have no idea why/if that would matter, but maybe it does?

[bentoms]

@emilykausalik, yea that's likely the issue.

All but Composer should really be the same version number.

[jmercier]

see... im having the exact same problems... except that if i lay down only the base image... it all works fine... as soon as i include packages to be installed on first boot... it either fails to reboot, or fails to reboot properly and installed the packages...

[bentoms]

Just saw this on a 10.9.4 NetBoot running Imaging 9.3.

Had this been fixed with 9.32?

[emily]

I'm still having this happen in 9.32, for what it's worth.

[bentoms]

@emilykausalik, I have some questions:

Are you launching Casper imaging under the root account via a LaunchAgent?

Are you imaging off of your Master DP? (& if so, what protocol).

Are you customising a config when this happens?

Does this happen when running Casper imaging immediately after Netbooting or when leaving it running for a while?

[emily]

@bentoms
Casper Imaging launches on start up (maybe that's the issue?!)

We use a parent/child JDS configuration, and imaging pulls from the JDS instances.

We use configuration profiles and rarely customize them (I don't think the rest of my team even knows how to do that yet).

We boot to a USB drive for imaging.

[spraguga]

@emilykausalik
We are running:
OS X 10.9.3 NetBoot and NBI (NBI built w/Apple Mavericks App store download and AutoDMG)
JSS v9.3.0

And are not experiencing this issue. The only difference I see from one post above is that we are not installing any packages after reboot only running scripts.

[bentoms]

Thanks both.

Only seen it just now with a 10.9.4 AutoCasperNBI created NetBoot. (Testing before beta release).

A 10.9.2 created NBI worked fine.

I'll retest the 10.9.4 one once the test mac has finished imaging.

I think the issue was I left the NetBoot running for a couple of hours before imaging.

[emily]

I'm going to try disabling the login item and have it have to be clicked to start up. I'm not entirely sure why that would matter, but it's worth a shot. Once I have a machine to image I'll report back.

[bentoms]

@emilykausalik, you seeing it everytime?

[bentoms]

So 10.9.2 NetBoot with imaging 9.3 worked fine created via AutoCasperNBI worked fine.

No luck with 10.9.4, same issue.

[bentoms]

@CasperSally, I actually commented on the wrong imaging thread. This is the one I meant.

-- (from other thread) --

Sadly I was am still being hit by this, so will delay the beta of AutoCasperNBI.

@foigus. I missed some of your post when testing earlier... & just for an email about my NetBoot server running out of space. So that's fun. We've also had some major power issues that have impacted our environment.

I was all about to blame the rc.netboot file when I realised I was also not resizing the dmg.

I'll amend AutoCasperNBI to always add + 2GB, will recheck my server space & will try again Monday.

If that works, then I'll have a beta out next week.

[CasperSally]

For what it's worth, our netboot is 10.9.4, we've never seen this issue - 9.32 here.

We don't use JDS (osx share points). We do auto launch Casper imaging on root account. We do set a quickadd package to run on boot volume, but even without this reboot worked ok for us. We've always had post image scripts to run at reboot though.

I've tested with and without the replaced utah rc.netboot file.

[bentoms]

@spraguga, do you resize the neboot.dmg or replace the rc.netboot file?

If you don't resize the dmg, what sizes are the OS.dmg from AutoDMG & the NetBoot.dmg created via SIU?

[bentoms]

@CasperSally, do you resize your NetBoot.dmg for it I have some free space?

Just trying to narrow down what stopped things from working for us. (Except for the power cut & AC failure in the server room Weds).

[CasperSally]

@bentoms - I didn't resize the Netboot.dmg until today so I've seen it working both ways. Knock on wood since everything else 9.32 and Netboot has been a hot mess for us this summer.

[bentoms]

@CasperSally... Cool thanks. I think other environmental issues busted it for us then.

[activitymonitor]

I am having this issue with my 10.6.8 NBI when using the modified rc.netboot file. At first I thought I made a mistake creating the NBI, but it reboots just fine if I lay down an image with disk utility or ASR. If I revert the rc.netboot file, Casper allows the reboot, but then I can only image ~10 systems at a time.

No issues with 10.9.2+. I am running Casper 9.32.

Any plans to make Casper NetInstall Creator 4.0 work with 10.6.8?

[bentoms]

So I've been having some fun with this.

It seems that no rc.netboot change, Casper Imaging 9.3.2 & HTTP NetBoot work.

Can someone please verify?

[activitymonitor]

@bentoms

10.6.8 - Works with stock rc.netboot, does not reboot with modified version.

10.9.3 - Works great with or without the modified rc.netboot.

[bentoms]

@activitymonitor Can I ask why your still using 10.6.8? I'm guessing any macs your NetBooting can take 10.7 too.

Just curious.

[activitymonitor]

@bentoms

I will try 10.7.5 next. I know some of our older machines won't boot it, but most should.