Does Casper Admin/Imaging hate SMB shares?

[Poseiden951]

Hello JAMF Nation!

We created an SMB share hosted on Windows Server 2012 last week and temporally made it our master distribution point. I replicated our AFP share to SMB and it worked great for two days before Casper admin/Imaging (Netboot for imaging) started refusing to mount it. In Casper Admin, I have to log off my account and log back in for it to mount even though I'm not connected to any shares.

We have four accounts plus a security group in AD that has access to smb://servername/CasperShare:
1) casperadmin with RW
2) casperinstall with RO.
3) My Windows admin account with RW (only person in the security group)
4) Our Windows Sysadmin's domain admin account

I can easily mount/access smb://servername/CasperShare in OS X and Windows without a problem, Casper is the only thing having an issue with it.

Does it matter that we have two other folders inside smb://servername?

Example: smb://servername1/Folder1 | smb://servername1/Folder2 | smb://servername1/CasperShare

Thank you for reading!

[scottb · Accepted solution]

If you're using Casper 9.65, you might try some of the things that went wrong in that release.
Change your server (DP) names in the JSS to IP Addresses rather than DNS names.
Remove special characters from your passwords such as "!", "@", "$", "/", etc.

All of our Windows 2008 servers also have more than one share - so that's OK. It's having it on the root of the server that appears important as well.

We noticed that doing:

ls /Volumes

Often showed /CasperShare 1, /CasperShare 2, /CasperShare 3, etc. Had to reboot to clear them out and then start again. When those show up, it fails.

[Poseiden951]

@boettchs I'll talk to our system admin about getting an IP address name instead of a DNS name and we're also using Casper 9.65. I can also rule the password issue out, all letters.

" you might try some of the things that went wrong in that release.". What do you mean?

[scottb]

@Poseiden951

The things I mentioned above, as well as spaces in server paths - which I did not mention as it looks like you don't have them based on the above info.

Do a basic search here with "9.65" as the criteria and you'll see more possibilities. I think some guys/gals are using Casper Imaging 9.62 or 9.63 (with 9.65) which has mitigated some issues as well - did not work for me.

[Poseiden951]

@boettchs

I might be able to find a copy of Casper Imaging 9.63, I'll try that. And I know for certain that the file server doesn't have any spaces.

[scottb]

@Poseiden951

You can download old versions under "your assets". I'm on a phone right now but look there and give that a shot. Good luck.

[jhalvorson]

What version of OS X are you using while using Casper Admin? I have had lingering connections to servers (not visible in finder but available in /Volumes) with 10.10.0 - 10.10.2.

Have you tried running Casper Admin with OS X 10.9 to see if the results are different?

[Poseiden951]

My current machine is on OS X 10.10.2 and Casper Imaging Netboot is on 10.10.2. I'll test Casper Admin on 10.9, could that possibility be why Casper Imaging is also having issues?

@jhalvorson

[Poseiden951]

@boettchs

Using the IP address instead of the DNS name worked fine. Changed the display name to CasperShare in the JSS just for good luck.

[scottb]

@Poseiden951 Good to hear. I have to change my passwords on the CasperAdmin and CasperInstall accounts now as they both have a "!" in them. I am seeing many more failures of routing things like inventory and using Casper Admin at the moment.
Changing to IP fixed the Self Service and some Imaging issues, but I'm hoping that the passwords change take care of the remaining bugaboos.

[dlondon]

Hi Poseidon951

So ... IP works properly but not DNS. To me that says the machine is not getting correct DNS info. In the long term you would be better off solving your DNS problem. It could just be with the info being provided by the DHCP server or with the DNS entries themselves.

We've been using SMB share from a vfiler for about 3+ years and apart from bad permissions at the beginning have had no issues with casper imaging ... and yes we use the DNS name

Regards,

David

[scottb]

@dlondon

Something changed (broke) in 9.65. We've been using DNS for years, as have many others. Nothing else changed sans the upgrade. There are a number of issues that came about with 9.65, and this is one of them.

[emily]

I think the short answer to the title of this discussion is "yes". Though admittedly we have two JDSs, child and parent, with DNS entries and they are working fine with Admin and Imaging. I've just noticed that it takes considerably longer to mount those drives than it used to.

[scottb]

@emilykausalik Just noticing today that Imaging is very slow to get started. Admin as well, but not as bad as imaging. Using 10.10.2 and 10.10.3 as a boot drive.

[Poseiden951]

@dlondon

Our DNS has no issues, It just doesn't work with the JSS. Everything else works flawlessly with it.