Dumb client question

[jarednichols]

Hi-

We have a monolithic image that we're slowly moving away from. If I put the Casper client onto a machine that I then prep for snapping an image of to distribute as my main image, are there any caveats to doing so? Will a new machine that gets the image then check into the JSS as a new machine and not the machine I created the image on?

Thanks

j
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Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Infrastructure and Operations
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[ernstcs]

The JAMF binary when it reports in should use the hardware's NIC MAC addresses to identify itself in the JSS, so it should remain unique to each machine no matter what. Unless you run into the issue of identical MAC addresses which I think someone posted about a little bit ago. =) A very unlikely thing to happen...

We make images that do not have any of the Casper Suite components in it, those get installed to the image when the system is imaged.

Hopefully that makes sense to your question, assuming I understood it correctly.

Craig E

[tlarkin]

Should not be an issue I put the casper client in my main image as well. The only thing I can think of, is that if your clients are segmented in a weird way where DNS won't resolve you will want to make sure your JSS is set to the IP and not the FQDN. Like for example, if you have a VLAN behind NAT, well with out the proper ports forwarded or opened with NAT you won't be able to resolve DNS.

This can be altered easily by editing the /etc/jamf.conf file. When I do my mass imaging it is behind NAT on my own little private network so for the clients to check into the JSS for autorun data my casper preference file in my netinstall image is by IP, but when they first check on on the actual network I have a policy to change it back to FQDN, that is because I like Domain Names better than IPs and I don't have to fuss with tons of router settings when my imaging network is temporary.

Another method would be to add it as an install during imaging if you want to do package based deployment. If all else fails you can massively install it via ARD which I have done as well.

Out of my 6,000 clients I have only maybe seen 5 to 10 jamf client binaries go corrupt over the past 2 years, so that is a testament on to how well it works.

Just my 2 cents

Tom

[jarednichols]

Excellent, thanks!

j

[tlarkin]

I think that we answered that in a previous email form the list though Craig, but I could be wrong. If I recall, if you change say logic boards in a Mac and it gets a new ethernet card recon should update the database entries for that machine....

Let me just check my inventory to be sure....

I have the client in my image and I just pulled 3 random MAC addresses and when I do a specific search for them I get a specific result so it seems they still stay unique in the JSS database regardless if they are in the image or not.

I would like to hear Jamf's official statement on it however just so I can sleep better at night.

Tom