Difficulty with Mid-2010 White Unibody MacBook and 10.10.3 Netboot

[zinkotheclown]

I've been having this odd issue lately. In my school district, we still have a large fleet of white unibody late 2009-mid-2010 MacBooks. Some of the site techs insist on installing 10.10.3 on them but my personal feeling is that they should get 10.7. I know they meet the minimum requirement but I think Yosemite runs best on i3's and better.

Anyway, a few of these techs had been netbooting these Macs into a 10.10.3 Casper Netboot I built with the Casper NetInstall Creator and is hosted on a Netboot/SUS appliance. Most of the 2009 versions of this MacBook imaged fine to Yosemite with this netboot, but the techs had severe difficulty netbooting the mid-2010 models. They would either kernal panic during netboot loading or during imaging. If you are persistent enough, a few PRAM zaps with repeat netbootings may net some success but it's very frustrating.

I've also tried a 10.7 netboot and while I'm able to boot into that consistently, imaging to 10.10.3 causes it skip packages somewhere in the workflow. This doesn't happen if I image to 10.7 however.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? It's really bizarre. The hardware specs should not be anything different from the 2009 model.

[mpermann]

If you're not using Casper Imaging 9.65 or later I think you will have issues imaging the computers using Mac OS 10.10.3 as the NBI. Have a look at this thread. I can't speak for why the mid-2010 models would be kernel panicing. Since @bentoms released AutoCasperNBI version 1.2.0, I've been using that with great success to quickly and easily build NBIs for our NetBoot server. I don't have any white unibody MacBooks to test with but the MacBook Pro models from those time frames NetBoot and image fine using my 10.10.3 NBI. But I am using Casper Imaging 9.72 with JSS 9.72. A bit more information about what version JSS and Casper Imaging you're using would be helpful.

[CasperSally]

We've had issues netbooting the 2010/2011 white macbooks for 2 years now with kernal panics (with 10.8 and 10.9 netboot). Usually if we try again (sometimes a few times) it goes through fine. Sometimes if you hit enter on the kernal panic the boot continues if you catch it at the right time.

I'm glad we'll only have a few hundred of them left this year...

We also had issues in the past with various model computers skipping packages like you mention, JAMF never really was able to help troubleshoot it. We were forced to compile every config... which only works if you have the space on the server to do so (and a weekend to compile away if you have enough configs).

[zinkotheclown]

@mpermann We are using 9.65 for both JSS and Casper Imaging. I've also got a 10.10.3 NBI built with the latest AutoCasperNBI but stopped using it as i3 iMacs have difficulty booting into it. I will see if I have better luck with the MacBooks next week.

@CasperSally It's good to know this issue isn't just isolated to us and those are exactly the same steps we've been taking. We used DeployStudio to image last year and we decided to use Casper primarily for imaging this year.

It a shame that while their management and inventory tools are top notch, their imaging tools are unreliable, unstable, and somewhat unsupported. When an outside developer has to create a better netboot creation tool than their own deprecated version, it speaks volumes about the confidence of their own product. I know that thin-imaging is the way to go but I think that is just a cop out to avoid their buggy imaging. We don't want to restore our devices to their original OS's. Most of our clients want the latest features a current OS presents so imaging to a newer OS is vital for us every summer.

[bentoms]

@dlee_pausd Any idea how much RAM is in these Macs?

Can you verbose NetBoot one of them & make a note of the error messages?

[bentoms]

Oh & @dlee_pausd I hope you mean JSS & Imaging 9.65!!

[zinkotheclown]

@bentoms Yes I am running 9.65. The usual amount of RAM in these Macs are 2 gigs.

I'm glad you replied... I'm having difficulty using images built by AutoCasperNBI load on the white Core2Duo MacBooks as well as i3 iMacs. I don't get an error or anything on these computers. They just shut down halfway loading the NBI.

[zinkotheclown]

I ran the Mac in verbose mode and I got "rc.netboot: Creating RAM Disk for var/netboot rc.netboot: create/car/netboot/.com.apple.NetBootX failed" a few times before shutting down

[mpermann]

@dlee_pausd I don't think you want to use a RAM disk for the shadow file on these White MacBooks if they only have 2 GB of RAM. I've never used the RAM disk option on anything with less than 4 GB of RAM.

[zinkotheclown]

Creating a NBI with AutoCasperNBI w/o the rc.netboot file allowed the i3 iMac to netboot into this NBI and the MacBook also booted but it kernal panicked. Here'a screenshot of the kernal panic:

[zinkotheclown]

@mpermann This would make sense....the ones that are tanking only have 2 gigs of RAM and by removing the shadow file option from the i3 allowed it to netboot fine. The only issue now is to figure out why the MacBooks are still kernal panicking.

[apizz]

Luckily for us, we have roughly 15 or so non-AirPlay Macbook Pros that we're decomming this year and replacing with Macbook Airs. The MBPs have 4GB of RAM, so we've been swapping out one of the 1GB RAM modules in the Mid 2010 Macbooks with a 2GB for a total of 3GB. I still experience kernel panicking at Netboot occasionally, but we are able to Netboot successfully, which we weren't able to w/ 2GB.

So if you're able, you can get away w/ 3GB of RAM in the white Macbooks.