Casper Imaging - We can never get AutoCasperNBIs to work - Suggestions?

[Seven]

I've read through a lot of the tutorials here and over at MacMule, and I've had zero success with getting Casper Imaging to work. At the moment, our team is using deploy studio because, unlike Casper Imaging, it works. (I've used Deploy Studio, Apple's NetBoot, CloneZilla Server, etc, and I've never had as many issues with those as I consistently have had trying to use Casper Imaging.)

Question 1.) Perhaps I have the wrong expectation, but in my mind I view the end result being that we can create configurations in Casper Admin and deploy those via Casper imaging. Is that correct?

Question 2.)
Does anyone have a fully documented process for doing this from step 1 to the end result? Or is the Mac Mule instruction set the best available? If the latter, are there any settings I should watch out for?

This is probably the case of me missing some random checkbox that is only mentioned in the 40th page of some random Google search result, and I'm too sick of fighting the !@#$ product to really care. But I'd love to get this working for our team, as the flexibility to customize builds would be a massive timesaver.

The primary issue we encounter is that the AutoCasperNBI is never problem free. No matter how I build it, they always automatically fail into recovery mode.

I'm open to any advice, re-calibration of my expectations, etc.

Note: I do not care about LOCAL imaging. We want network imaging. We have no need or interest in doing local, non-network-based imaging.

[rluk]

I have struggled with creating a netboot image with AutoCasperNBI as well. I finally got it working through trial and error. Creating a Netboot image is very sensitive to OS versions. I've tried countless configurations and this is the one that ended up working for me.

DMG creation:
Used Mac with preinstalled 10.10.5 never booted. Target booted and captured with Composer.

Netboot server must be running 10.10.5 as well. Created netboot image with AutoCasperNBI 1.2.1 on netboot server.

Hope this helps.

[calumhunter]

its about as straight forward as you can get

take 1 autodmg created dmg, feed it to autocaspernbi with your settings
voila!

it seriously just works.

Perhaps if you list your steps, step by step in as much detail as possible we can help trouble shoot your issue.

Details like hardware type, os versions including build numbers and versions of the applications your using, versions of your jss, any buttons or checkboxes your clicking, netboot server type and version, ect ect

More info = more help

I get you're frustrated but "its broken, help" doesn't really give us much to go on

[makander]

It's working fine for me and for a lot of people so there has to be something in your setup that's off.

I just feed AutoCasperNBI and image and the same version of the casper imaging as the JSS and then I create the ACNBI image and load it onto our NetBoot server.

Regarding your first question, that's exactly how Casper Imaging works. You create configurations in Casper Admin and then you deploy them with Casper Imaging.

[davidacland]

It's worked fine for me every time I've used it.

@Seven you're correct, you should be able to make a config in Casper admin and then deploy using Casper imaging.

Could you expand on the issues you're getting? There's loads of potential issues so not sure where to start on suggestions.

[gachowski]

Seven,

I have custom scripts to that I want to add to my casper imaging netboots, so I build them by manually with system image utility before AutoCasperNBI existed. It's really easy.

I know Jamf may not support AutoCasperNBI, but I bet they have a support way to create casper imaging netboot imagines, have you reached out to them? They are really really good at support, explain that your are frustrated and most likely need some hand holding : ) ( we all do at some time or another) : )

And last there are over 1,200 hits for netboot when you search Jamf Nation... so a few people have had some issue and finding your workflow with a netboot takes some time...

C

[stevewood]

@Seven I have to echo what @calumhunter said, give us more info so we can help. The few times I've had issues with AutoCasperNBI I was able to track it down to the NBI using HTTP instead of NFS, or vice versa. The process I use for creating an NBI is:

1) Download latest version of OS from App Store.
2) Download latest version of AutoDMG from GitHub (AutoDMG
3) Drop downloaded OS from step 1 into AutoDMG to create DMG file.
4) Download latest version of AutoCasperNBI (AutoCasperNBI
5) Run AutoCasperNBI using the OS DMG I created in step 3.
6) Upload NBI to server.

All of that is done on the same machine, running the same OS that I am creating the DMG/NBI of. So if I want an El Cap NBI I would do all of that on an El Cap machine.

As far as your question about DS and Casper Imaging workflows, can you elaborate on how you image and how you are using CI? Are you erasing the hard drives and laying down a fresh OS then packages/apps? Are you leaving the factory OS in place and just adding packages? Or are you using a fat image that is OS and apps all baked into one DMG file?

CI can handle all of these scenarios, and you can build configurations in Casper Admin that Casper Imaging uses.

Like I said earlier, give us some more info to go on and the Nation will try to help.

[KCH080208]

Ditto what @stevewood said. I follow that same exact process and it works. Just need some info on the process and I am sure could find the issue.

[bentoms]

@Seven hey.. macmule here :)

Really recommend the AutoDMG to AutoCasperNBI route.

Can you advise what issues you have been seeing when creating & booting to NBI's & what servers you have?

NOTE: AutoCasperNBI creates NetBoot Images, DS (iirc) creates NetInstall images.

Theres a few differences.

Have you tried: Casper NetInstall Creator?

[Seven]

Thanks all -- I'm working on this tomorrow and will try the help/suggestions people posted here. And I'll report back with specific details for any issues I encounter.

Part of my lack of details is that I wanted to just make sure that I was even headed down the right path with correct assumptions. I'll return with full details.

I love this community.

[Boughen]

Hi @Seven and @bentoms I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this discussion.
We have been using AutoDMG and AutoCasperNBI for a while and they are both great tools, but I'm suddenly having an issue building a new netboot image. The issue I'm having is, when I boot from the new image I get a login screen with the User System administrator, I have tried the password "netboot" which was in the documentation for AutoCasperNBI.

My NBI build process is quite simple:
- Build is being made on a Mac running 10.10.5
- Download 10.10.5 Installer from the Mac App Store - Build 14F27
- Convert this into a DMG using AutoDMG - Version 1.5.3
- Add this DMG to AutoCasperNBI - version 1.3.0 (2)
- Add Casper Imaging - version 9.81
- Add JSS - version 9.81
- Hit Build.

I tail the log and always see:
Tue Oct 27 18:25:17 GMT 2015 Trying to set Root User auto login
Tue Oct 27 18:25:17 GMT 2015 Successfully set Root User auto login

I upload the NBI to out NetBoot server and boot from it, but end up at the login screen.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Neil

[Boughen]

Please ignore my previous post, I have found the issue.
AutoCasperNBI seems to have held onto setting from a previous build, so that even though I was using it with its default settings, the NBI was being created with old settings inplace.

A fresh user and re-downloading AutoCasperNBI to a new location removed the "stuck" settings.

Neil

[bentoms]

@Boughen AutoCasperNBI writes it's setting to a plist so that they are re-used next time it's ran.

This includes any custom PKG's you may have added.

Did you perhaps add a PKG to make some changes? You should see them under the "bad" accounts "Additonal PKGs" tab when AutoCasperNBI is ran under that account.

[bentoms]

@Seven any update?

[Seven]

@bentoms - Indeed!

I followed @calumhunter 's super simple work flow: I took a never-before-booted machine, fed it into autodmg, and then fed that into autocaspernbi. Now I can at least netboot into an imaging environment.

(I tried again but with a system that had been booted before, and it would not work. Using the NetBoot option seems highly dependent upon using a system that has never been booted).

After that, I uploaded the AutoDMGNBI into Casper Admin and made a configuration from it, which of course didn't work. I just wasn't think about NetBoot vs NetInstall until I saw your reminder above. So this afternoon I used AutoDMG to create a DMG from the 10.10.5 installer, and I'm guessing that it will work fine (it is uploading right now).

Questions (pardon any ignorance):
1.) For thick-style imaging, similar to DeployStudio, I can do an AutoDMG of a machine that is fully configured. I've yet to look into thin imaging, but I presume I can use the current setup to boot an out-of-the-box machine and install packages on it (installing just packages rather than an entire OS). Is that a correct presumption? (We have DEP so this is really just a temporary fix so I can focus on making an out-of-the-box solution powered by DEP and skip imaging, either thin or thick, all together).

2.) I'm curious how one goes about scheduling the automated imaging of certain machines. For example, I'd like to automatically re-image some various mac minis on a nightly basis, a similar scenario to a computer lab. I've not yet dug deeper into this subject, but if you have any hints/suggestions/resources, I'd be grateful.

[bentoms]

@Seven for 1) Does this help?

2) With csrutil you might have an issued automating 10.11 Macs. But otherwise the JSS should be able to do this, I've not done it in some time so I'd advise a new thread on that.