How to install Mountain Lion w/out any user interaction

ooshnoo
Valued Contributor

Yo..

Using the steps here: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/article.html?id=173 we're deploying Mountain Lion to our clients. Yet our help desk would like to be able to by pass the steps in the installer where you have to select which drive you'd like it instlal it in, accept the EULA, etc.. That way it can be completely automated.

Anyone know how to bypass those steps?

Thanks
A

8 REPLIES 8

frozenarse
Contributor II

Are you talking about 'Scenario 2' on that page?

I haven't tried it but others have talked about using this: http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/son-of-installlion-pkg/

rtrouton
Release Candidate Programs Tester

I definitely would recommend using Greg Neagle's createOSXinstallPkg for 10.8 upgrades. It bypasses the issue of having to select the drive, accept EULA, etc. and provides an automated upgrade. It works fine with Self Service.

Allen Golbig gave a talk at Penn State MacAdmins 2012 about installLion.pkg, which is the earlier name for this installer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eMgh41KgOk

ooshnoo
Valued Contributor

Thanks fellas. I'll give it a whirl!

ooshnoo
Valued Contributor

okay, so it didn't work. package downloaded for a while, and did some "processing" for a while and then reported back tthat the policy was complete.

I then thought that the reboot i setup in the policy would trigger the install to start when rebooting but it didn't.

This all works when running the package manually though.

krimkus
New Contributor II

We've successfully updated 6000 Macs during the past three months from 10.6.6 to 10.8.2 using the 10.6.8 combo updater and Greg Neagle's createOSXinstallPkg. It took some work to get the right workflow.

We created three policies. The first policy was manually triggered to avoid accidental updates. It updated the computers from 10.6.6 to 10.6.8, then created a smart group that triggered the second policy that updated the computers to 10.8.2. When that policy completed, it created a smart group that triggered the final policy that ran software patches and ran a few customizations.

This automation worked fine in small numbers, but when it was triggered on a larger scale, the smart groups quickly got out of hand. We were triggering updates when we didn't want to, so we ended up keeping the three policies, but triggering each with a manual trigger and using static groups. This gave us more control. Anyway, this is all to say that it took a lot of testing, but we were able to make it work.

Regarding getting the 10.8.2 to reboot into the OS installer, it wasn't until I delayed the reboot in the Advanced settings with /sbin/shutdown -r +5 that I was able to get the computers to boot into the installer.

barnesaw
Contributor III

For my ML installs from SelfService (using Greg Neagle's createOSXinstallPkg), I had to use the Reboot To: Currently Selected (No bless) option.

Services
New Contributor

Adding

Reboot To: Currently Selected (No bless) option.
from Barnsaw's comment resolved the touchless install issue I ran into just yesterday. Policy and everything ran completed, but was not rebooting into the installer.

denmoff
Contributor III

I'm new to Casper and I'm using JSS v 9.12. Is the process the same on this version? The createOSXinstallpkg tool creates a non-flat pkg which the JSS will zip. Do i just use the installpkgfromdmg script?