JAMF Pro Upgrading from macOS Big Sur to macOSMonterey

[ukmercenary]

Newbie here.

So as an IT Engineer in a startup with full admin access to JAMF Pro.  I need some guidance. I am currently trying to build a Macbook which has  macOS Big Sur on it.  When I booted it up I held down option + Command + R which I thought was supposed to look online and download the lastest macOS supported for the Mac I am buildng.

This doesn't seem to happen and i am only given the optinon to reinstall the old macOS Big Sur.  Which is time consuming as then I will need to manually download macOS Monterey.

Where I worked before the admin guys managed to somewhere script JAMF Pro to regonise Macs with old OS and auto upgrade them to the latest..some kind of task sequence?

Another option would be to have macOS Monterey avilable to self service but the above method would be better.

How best to acchive this.?

Please only reply if you have done this before ! no offence !

[barpas]

Hey there,
You might want to check this article below regarding a fresh new install of a version of macOS:
https://www.jamf.com/blog/reinstall-a-clean-macos-with-one-button/
Cheers!

[sdagley]

@ukmercenary It doesn't get much easier than using @grahamrpugh 's  https://github.com/grahampugh/erase-install script (the Wiki section of that link has a section on using from Jamf Pro) but note that you will need a user logged in to run the macOS installer. Also note taht on Macs with M-series processors the user will need to enter their password to authorize the installation.

[NewbSysAdmin227]

You could try Shift + Option + Command + R if that other one didn't work. According to this. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

[ukmercenary]

The problem is I choose Shift + Option + Command + R  and it goes into Internet recovery as I have to enter admin password then select the correct Wifi.  However this is a Macbook Pro 16 inch 2019 with an i7.

The only option I get is to reinstall macOS Big Sur...why do Apple make this so difficult

[ukmercenary]

when I go to select macOS Big Sur it says "An internet connection is required to install macOS.  This is a known working Wifi

[NewbSysAdmin227]

I've gotten that before too. Generally I just had to wait a bit and try again in a few minutes. I'm not sure why there is a delay sometimes with the activation.

[ukmercenary]

Well I entered the wifi password again and now it is letting me re-install macOS big Sur so that is a start at least!

[mainelysteve]

@sdagley +100 on Graham's erase-install. Works a treat

@ukmercenary I upgrade my non-deployed Macs using a USB3/Thunderbolt external SSD with the bootable installer on it. Goes by fairly quickly and is a bit quicker than a standard usb flash drive. It's better to get the machine at the latest supported version now versus dealing with it post enrollment when the potential new user of that machine just wants to get to work on their TPS reports. That's just my two cents on that matter.

[Matt_Roy93]

Does this method of upgrading from external media work consistently with T2 enabled Mac, do you disable boot protection from recovery menu on every machine?

[mainelysteve]

If you have firmware security enabled to prevent usb booting then that's something you'll need to individually turn off.  It doesn't come into play for me as one I don't use it and two the machines I'm mentioning above are either still in their shrink wrap or were unboxed but never deployed.