How to update Casper Imaging on NBI's to multiple servers

jwojda
Valued Contributor II

What's the easiest way to update the C.Imaging.app on all the NBI's? As our environment has grown, I have about 13 servers now that all need to be updated and I've been doing them manually which is a pain.

6 REPLIES 6

mradams
Contributor

Same here, I am at 10 servers with more in the process.

bradtchapman
Valued Contributor II

Are all 13 NBI's different, or the same? Why not update one master, and then synchronize the file to the rest?

bmarks
Contributor II

Are they Macs? One of the great features of Apple Remote Desktop is the ability to send files, packages, even Terminal commands to multiple Macs simultaneously. This is how I update my NetBoot images after updating them. Also, if you aren't using it, AutoCasperNBI is a great way to create your NetBoot images. This isn't exactly answering your question but what I do is create a new image via AutoCasperNBI and the let ARD replace the NetBoot image on all of my servers. It's a pretty fast workflow.

lindell
New Contributor

Not sure about your environment, but if your servers are managed, you can simply deploy a script that will mount the .DMG and copy the new Casper Imaging.app to the .DMG.

Here's how we update CI on ~50 Mac DPs managed by the JSS.

#!/bin/sh
#
#
# Update Casper Imaging.app 

#mount the NetBoot.dmg
hdiutil attach /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/NetBoot_10_10_4_Current.nbi/NetBoot.dmg

#Copy Casper Imaging
cp -rpv "/private/tmp/CI981/Casper Imaging.app" /Volumes/NetBoot_10_10_4_Current/Applications/

sleep 5

#unmount the NetBoot.dmg
hdiutil detach /Volumes/NetBoot_10_10_4_Current/

This is paired with a package that writes the CI app to /private/tmp.

jwojda
Valued Contributor II

That's awesome, but is there a way to have it look at all the netbook folders and update all of them? This helps as new ones come out then the script won't need to be modified.

Also, with the NBI's. When I update them, the netbook.dmg needs to be renamed to .sparseimage, then I can write the file to it, then I need to rename them back.

benducklow
Contributor III

@bmarks I'd love to get a breakdown of commands and workflow you use with ARD. Sounds slick!