Custom Build of OS X 10.10.3 w/2015 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display?

[pcrandom]

Wondering if anyone's had a peek in stores at the new 15" rMBP released yesterday to see if it's using the standard 14D131 build of OS X 10.10.3, or if it has a custom build? My hope, against prior precedence, is that, since the standard 10.10.3 can drive the newer-but-still-Haswell CPUs and the Force Touch trackpad on the 2015 13" rMBPs, it can also drive the new 15" rMBPs.

[scottb]

Jeez, if Apple and JAMF fixed everything tomorrow, 1/3 of the people with jobs like us would be unemployed.
Let's face it, being high-tech janitors, it's nice to have some problems to figure out now and then. Or hourly.
And, I reckon that most here find this torture fun. Or else we'd all be working at Starbucks...

[donmontalvo]

@boettchs wrote:

Jeez, if Apple and JAMF fixed everything tomorrow, 1/3 of the people with jobs like us would be unemployed.

I think that would free up more cycles for us to work on more important stuff. It's always been a goal in enterprise to push stuff down the ladder. How else will you free yourself to move up the ladder.

At some point the business has to decide whether we are needed, or whether we can be replaced. Those that enable others survive and live to fry the bigger fish. Those that don't have a shorter life.

[mm2270]

I think Apple's yearly OS releases are not so great and I think the cracks are beginning to show. Yosemite for example, shipped with a pretty significant amount of bugs. Some of them have been addressed, but there are others lingering, still waiting to be addressed by Apple. While this isn't uncommon, some of the bugs were things that were quite baffling and affected everyone, not just the enterprise.
In the larger context of all OS X releases going back to 10.0.0, Yosemite wasn't that bad, but keep in mind this was the 11th major release of OS X, and some pretty basic items were broken out of the gate. I personally think Apple needs to slow it down a bit and start focusing on what they have done so well for so many years, which is quality.

The problem that comes in here is that, Apple has kind of created their own monster. By having a brand new release of OS X every year with a bunch of new fancy features and big UI changes, they've trained the public to expect this. Truth is, bug fixes aren't sexy and don't sell computers or software. But at some point, buggy crappy software is going to hurt their sales. Yeah, it hasn't happened yet, based on recent quarterly results, but I'm concerned it will start to affect things if they keep trying to maintain this pace. I just don't want to see OS X start becoming like Windows was a few years back where it was just buggy inconsistent and unreliable. Funny how things are beginning to reverse; now with Apple on top of the world, they're getting a bit sloppy. MS by contrast has shaken things up internally and are starting to focus on quality releases and not just slapping in new features. That's part of what got Microsoft into trouble with Windows in the first place.

Anyway, If recent rumors posted out there are true, the developers inside Apple are feeling it too and are pressuring execs to slow things down so they can focus on fixing and refining, instead of new! new! new!! all the time. I sure hope sane minds prevail and they take their top developers warnings into consideration. Time will tell I guess...

[Chris_Hafner]

@mm2270 I wholeheartedly agree. I was hoping that they would fall off that bandwagon when they left the "MacWorld" conference behind. Turns out I was wrong on that one. I do think it's important to keep the OS moving forward, but slamming out a major OS version every 12 months is bound to take it's toll.

As for the forked release. Apple could certainly make the "fork" available to at least registered Developers easily enough. It's not like we don't have our tricks to get, essentially, the ESD anyways.

[milesleacy]

What's the model identifier for this model? I'd like to be accurate when discussing it. Thanks!

[mm2270]

@milesleacy That's a good question. I just looked and Mactracker hasn't been updated yet for the new 15" model. But based on the past pattern, it might be "MacBookPro12,2" for the 2.2 Ghz, and "MacBookPro12,3" for the 2.5 Ghz model. But we'll need to wait until someone who has one can report on that.

[donmontalvo]

Nothing for 15" models on Everymac lookup page yet.

[scottb]

Just got a client with 2015 rMBP 15" 11,4. OS X 10.10.3 14D2134.

HTH, for one model anyway...

[donmontalvo]

Maybe they're watching this thread? :)

[mm2270]

Ah, wow, I was way off on my guess. Looking back now I see that the Mid 2014 15" model was 11,3, so it makes sense the latest ones start at 11,4.

[donmontalvo]

From the MacTracker developer:

Hi Don, The latest MacBook Pro will be included in the next release. It is currently under review with Apple so should be available shortly. -Ian

[jimmy-swings]

Has anyone had any luck resolving this issue? We have just received a large shipment and the latest software update doesn't yet cover these devices.

Thanks, James.

[bpavlov]

@james.stracey A forked OS build it seems. If the question is how to image it, well you can capture what comes with the computer (I'm assuming you're wiping and imaging computers as they come in otherwise leave it with the OS it comes with).

If it's a question of creating a netboot set then you will have to create a netboot set on that new hardware and deal with temporarily having two netboot sets broadcasting for the time being. Or you can TRY and see if the 10.10.4 beta unifies all hardware and you can build a netboot set off that. I believe that worked for some with 10.10.3 beta when there were special builds for 10.10.2.

[jimmy-swings]

Thanks @bpavlov - I had hoped to leverage off my packer based pipeline for image creation. Looks like I'm back to the leveraging physical kit for image development...

[calumhunter]

@james.stracey you only need the physical kit in order to obtain the forked install ESD via internet recovery for example then you should be able to use your packer/autodmg workflow

[donmontalvo]

MacTracker updated to include new hardware.

[gachowski]

So,

I was able to build a netboot image with 14D2134 and we are able to run Casper imaging on the factory build. But 14D2134 will not bind to AD, with the Casper binary or dsconfigad, I can bind in the GUI.

We are able to bind the downloaded X.10.3 with the same netboot image and prestage.

Anybody seeing anything like this?

C

[ant89]

@gachowski - I got the same thing. I built a netboot image and successfully imaged with 14D2134 BUT im unable to login with AD accounts.

A workaround i found was to create a local admin account before you image within casper imaging. After it images. log into the machine with that account. Wait a couple minutes, and it will bind to AD. Log out and test with an AD account.

[dgreening]

I've had no issue with AD binding on 14D2134 netboot/baseos...

[gachowski]

@acorn

: )

Just killing my zero touch image process : )

Thanks it's great to know the work around and that I wasn't doing anything wrong.. I have an open tix with Apple : )

C

[dspadmin]

14D136 definitely won't boot the new 15 inch MacBook Pro Mid 2015 as I've tried it. It comes with 14D2134. This is why I use thin imaging. I had to use Internet Recovery to reinstall the OS after some of our techs hosed the machine.

[ErryTec]

ƒ~gachowski] Was your procedure to get the nbi? The Yosemite installer in the AppStore is still the old build so it doesnt work with this new mac

[bpavlov]

@ErryTec I documented this the other day. I can't say for sure if it will apply to future versions of beta update releases (not major releases but minor combo update releases). And I definitely don't know if this would have worked in previous instances as I never really tested beta updates. I look to do it going forward though and wanted to at least figure out how to do it for when it comes up again. So here's what I got:

In situations where there is a special build of OS X due to new hardware releases it is possible to create universal OS X build.
Register and sign up for the OS X Seed Program to download the latest beta available via the App Store Updates.
We want to capture the file that is downloaded, but also keep it before it gets removed.
We will use a few built-in OS X tools to accomplish this:

Open up Terminal on your computer and type:

sudo opensnoop | grep "com.apple.SoftwareUpdate"

Press Enter

"opensnoop" will snoop on file opens as they occur essentially giving us the ability to see what files are being touched.
We are grepping for "com.apple.SoftwareUpdate" because the hidden directory (which is located under /var/folders/) is a subfolder to all a bunch of randomly generated folder names. It's quite a couple of folder levels deep.

Now that this process is running in Terminal, open up the App Store and check for updates and initiate the download.
You do not want to let it finish until you can find the directory show up in Terminal. Press "Cancel" and "Resume" as often as you need to until you find the folder in question in Terminal.

Once we find that folder, go back to Terminal and copy the entire folder path. If you can't find it, you may have to leave the grep portion out of the first command and just do opensnoop on its own. Ultimately, what we want to know is where that file is downloading.

In Terminal, you can either cancel opensnoop by pressing CTRL + C or quit Terminal and reopen it again.
Alternatively, you can open a new Terminal window if you want to leave opensnoop running in the background.

Either way, make sure you are in a working Terminal window and type out:

sudo ls -la /path/copied/just/moments/ago

press Enter

You should see a file ending with the extension ".tmp". Let's dig deeper. In Terminal, type out:

sudo ls -la /path/copied/just/moments/ago/file.tmp

press Enter

Does the timestamp match up with when you just canceled the App Store download? If yes, we found the file in question.

The next step is creating a hardlink to that file so that we can use it later.
In Terminal, type out:

sudo ln /path/copied/just/moments/ago/file.tmp ~User/Desktop/OSXbetaupdate.pkg

press Enter

This will create a duplicate copy of the file that you can keep.
Go back to the App Store and check for updates again and resume the beta update download.
Wait for it to finish downloading but do not proceed with actually installing.
You should now be able to run the PKG manually by double-clicking it.

Now you can use the pkg as part of an AutoDMG workflow in case you want to create a image running the latest OS X beta update to use as a base for a netboot image.
If you are testing the latest beta update and find yourself rebuilding the OS you do not need to worry about re-downloading.
Just wanted to warn that you should not use that pkg in production as it is still beta software you are downloading!

I tested this all in a VM environment and the NBI set worked successfully using AutoCasperNBI.

[gachowski]

@ErryTec

The .nbi is just a for a Casper Imaging netboot not netinstall, you are right there is really no supported way to create an netinstall image. We don't install the OS in our "imaging" process.

I use internet recovery to get a clean install, then I set up the root account the way I like, kinda following the Jamf doc. Then I used a second 2015 MBP and System Imagine Utility per the Apple doc.

If you need more info let me know : )

C

[gachowski]

@bpavlov

There is a much easier way to get the beta installer... the steps are in the old Apple dev forum. It's the same process but finding the address is much easier : )

Apple asked not to post the links, but they didn't pull the post that showed how to get the link... so I kinda got the vibe it's ok but not really ok.... : )

C

[bpavlov]

@gachowski Link please? The link is useless to someone without a dev account.

Not directed at you Chris, but it's just about the 3rd or 4th time someone has mentioned the dev forums this week so allow me to just rant so I can get it out of my system:
<rant>It's a little frustrating when the dev forum is mentioned but no link to the discussion is provided. I get the whole Apple NDA stuff. But linking or provided titles to search for isn't breaking any NDA.</rant>

[bpavlov]

And just in case, I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and say that one could find the direct link by simply running a network tool like WireShark to capture the connections open (I'm going to guess it's an HTTP download) and retrieving the link that way.

Definitely an easier approach for sure.

[bpavlov]

For anyone interested, here is the link that was referred to earlier. Access to the Dev program needed:
https://devforums.apple.com/message/1082343#1082343

And I was wrong about my approach. There's an even easier way to do it without involving wireshark. But as always, different ways to skin a cat.

[skoonin]

Hey Guys -

Just adding my two cents to this... since Apple doesn't offer OS builds anymore, I used carbon copy cloner to make a read-only DMG of a brand new retina, unbooted and not setup via target disk mode.

Using this DMG I was able to build a working Netboot (via AutoCasperNBI) as well as image using this file as my baseOS.

So far all other models have been able to netboot and use this base OS. However, we may just install this OS on the retina's to be safe.

sk

[cdev]

@skoonin That's about the same thing I've done, except using Casper Imaging v9.72 to capture the clean, never-booted image of a new MacBook Pro. This image can then be used with Casper Admin for configs and imaging, as well as AutoCasperNBI to create the Netboot image.

I've had no issues booting any of our currently supported hardware from the new NBI, and am testing the forked OS build on other machines, but so far, no issues.

[bentoms]

@cdev You mean Composer 9.72 right?

Did you grab the Recovery Partition too?

@skoonin Did CCC capture the Recovery Partition too?

[cdev]

@bentoms you are correct. I meant composer. Captured the main and recovery partitions and all is working well.

[skoonin]

@bentoms unfortunately it did not capture recovery partition, didn't check for that initially. CCC is usually pretty good about capturing the recovery partion during cloning so I'm surprised it didn't catch it direct to the diskimage. in our case, we have only a small number of these machines in our environment, so recovery isn't really needed.

[Chris_Hafner]

@skoonin Give composer a shot like @cdev did. The latest version (9.72) does that quite well!

[ant89]

@gachowski or anyone else find a solution for AD binding?

My method is hit or miss. I can get it to bind after imaging after i log in with a local admin account - sometimes it doesnt work... but then will work after a second re-image.

[gachowski]

@acorn

Crap I tried your method three times and it worked. : ( We are seeing that our normal process with out an account on the machines is intermittent too.

C