Lion Netboot - Startup disk has no more space available

[plawrence]

Hi List

I am planning on imaging some Lion machines soon so I had a look at the Casper NetBoot Automator Action and its associated instructions. I created a Lion NetBoot image by doing the following:

Installed Lion onto a Macbook Pro and setup a user Booted the Macbook Pro into Target Disk Mode and connected it to another Lion machine Used Composer to Create an OS Package Mounted the resulting DMG and used it as the source for System Image Utility to create a NetBoot image using the Casper Automator Action

I can then NetBoot my laptop to this image and run Casper Imaging to install a configuration. During the install a warning box appears stating "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory" (See image here: http://imgur.com/nWgmC). The imaging finishes fine, even with this message appearing. Is anyone else seeing this, or can anyone give me pointers on where to look for whats causing this?

I am NetBooting to a 10.6.8 server which is hosting the Casper Lion NetBoot image. I haven't got the 'Diskless' box ticked for this NetBoot image and under 'Select where to put client data' I have both 'Images' and 'Client Data' ticked for the local hard drive. The NetBoot server has plenty of free disk space and memory while the process is running.

Regards

Patrick Lawrence

[briangoldstein]

Support had me increase the NetBoot.dmg size and it did not help in my case.

Just wanted to throw my scenarios out there just in case it helps find an answer. Our servers and images are running 10.7.1

-At one client I created the NBI on the latest MBP w/ 8 GB of ram. The error only pops up when imaging a machine with less than 8 GB or ram in it.
-At the same client I created an MBA NBI on the latest MBA w/ 4GB of ram and the error pops up when imaging, even using the machine it was created on.
-At another client I created the NBI on the latest iMac w/ 4GB of ram and I have yet to see the error on any machines even w/ less than 4 GB of ram.

Brian

--
Brian Goldstein
Singer Consulting, Inc.
brian at randsinger.com
888.222.2959 x2103

[bentoms]

I see the same with a 10.7 NetBoot created using the Automator action.

My NetBoot server is 10.7.1

Regards,

Ben.

[stevewood]

Your NetBoot server has to be the same or higher OS version to host
the image. In this case, to host a 10.7 NetBoot image your server has
to be running 10.7.x. You cannot host a 10.7.x image from a 10.6.8
server.

Steve

[ImAMacGuy]

I have the same problem on a 10.7.x server when netbooting 10.7.x images.

John Wojda
Lead System Engineer, DEI & Mobility
3333 Beverly Rd.  B2-338B
Hoffman Estates, IL 60179
Phone:  (847)286-7855
Page:  (224)532.3447
Team Lead DEI: Matt Beiriger
Team Lead Mobility: Chris Sta Ana
                   Mac Tip/Tricks/Self Service & Support

"Any time you choose to be inflexible in your approach to an unpredictable project you are already building failure into your plan"

[bazcurtis]

Hi,
On 6 Oct 2011, at 12:27, Baz Curtis wrote:

I have a Lion Netboot image booting fine from 10.6.8 server. Casper Imaging opens and has no config option. I have to close it and then reopen it holding down alt. It fails to erase the hard disk prior to imaging and I haven't had time to look at these last 2 issues, but it does boot fine into Lion.

Best wishes

Michael

On 6 Oct 2011, at 08:58, Patrick Lawrence wrote:

Hi List I am planning on imaging some Lion machines soon so I had a look at the Casper NetBoot Automator Action and its associated instructions. I created a Lion NetBoot image by doing the following: Installed Lion onto a Macbook Pro and setup a user Booted the Macbook Pro into Target Disk Mode and connected it to another Lion machine Used Composer to Create an OS Package Mounted the resulting DMG and used it as the source for System Image Utility to create a NetBoot image using the Casper Automator Action I can then NetBoot my laptop to this image and run Casper Imaging to install a configuration. During the install a warning box appears stating "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory" (See image here: http://imgur.com/nWgmC). The imaging finishes fine, even with this message appearing. Is anyone else seeing this, or can anyone give me pointers on where to look for whats causing this? I am NetBooting to a 10.6.8 server which is hosting the Casper Lion NetBoot image. I haven't got the 'Diskless' box ticked for this NetBoot image and under 'Select where to put client data' I have both 'Images' and 'Client Data' ticked for the local hard drive. The NetBoot server has plenty of free disk space and memory while the process is running. Regards Patrick Lawrence <ATT00001..c>

[jarednichols]

You'll need to expand the size of your NetBoot.dmg file.

hdiutil resize -size xxGB <NetBoot.dmg file>

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

[nessts]

I will have to try this, but I have 10.7.2 netboot working from a 10.6.8 server, I just use disk utility to add a spaceholder.dmg that I create and put in the home directory of the auto login users home then I can delete that and have an instant 50GB or how ever much space I want.

--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

[stevewood]

Well, I guess I'm wrong, which is most likely the case, or Apple changed
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Ness, Todd <todd.ness at hp.com> wrote:
something, because if memory serves me correctly, you could not create a
NetBoot image that was a higher OS level than the server hosting the image. So, like I said in my earlier email, if my server was running 10.6.x my
NetBoot image could not be 10.7.x.

At least that's how I remember it. And I'm not talking about what image
Casper lays down on the machine, just the OS version in the NetBoot image.

I stand corrected.

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

[nessts]

you are correct, I create it on a 10.7 server but I save it to the 10.6 server that has been running netboot, turning on netboot on the 10.7 server with the the 10.6 server seemed to not be very fruitful and the problems I was having with vpn on 10.7, I wasted no more time on it and just copied the file over to the other server and it seemed to work there, so that’s the current process.
--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

[talkingmoose]

You do need to create the NetBoot image on a system running a comparable
On 10/6/11 9:25 AM, "Steve Wood" <swood at integer.com> wrote:
OS, however, once that image is made you can host it on most versions of
Mac OS X Server. I have a 10.6 system hosting both 10.5 and 10.6 NetBoot
images. I wouldn't be surprised it would handle 10.7 as well. The NetBoot
server doesn't really care.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

[daworley]

NetBoot is basically a fork of DHCP. The underlying code is basic enough to have not changed much in years. NetBoot servers can be various versions of OS X Server, or even Linux if you are up for a wee challenge.

The platform-specific issue is in the creation of the .nbi (NetBoot Image) folder. This has all of the booter files as well as actual operating system built for network distribution. The tools used to make disk images change within each version of OS X, so a Lion image needs to be made from another system running Lion. Snow Leopard images need to be built on Snow systems, etc.

Once that lion image is built using an existing lion system (a bit of a bootstrapping issue there, to be sure) it can be hosted on basically any version of NetBoot server.

At least, that is expected behavior as of now. Things likely might change in the future.

Cheers, - D

Sent from my Tricorder. ?

[bentoms]

Can you try creating the NetBoot manually? I.e not using Automator.

Maybe for now to test, just boot into a lion OS. Create root account. Then set it to auto login with imaging launching.

If that works, then it's the Automator action. (possibly).

Regards,

Ben.

[briangoldstein]

That is how I created them. I'll go the other direction soon and create one w/ automator and see how it compares.

Brian
--
Brian Goldstein
Singer Consulting, Inc.
brian at randsinger.com
888.222.2959 x2103

For general support inquiries please email support at randsinger.com

[bentoms]

Sorry. My reply was more to Patrick the OP.

Regards,

Ben.

[plawrence]

I added an extra 10GB to the size of the NetBoot.dmg file, but the error still appears. It doesn't prevent the imaging process from completing, so I guess its not really an issue. I mainly wanted to see if others were experiencing this or if it is something I should be concerned about.

Patrick

[#17]

I am experiencing this issue as well. Imaging completes without any issues but it is weird to see this message when first logging into the netboot environment.

Jason Butler
Mac Admin - Client Systems
Information Services
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
jason.butler at cchmc.org
513.803.6504

[nessts]

I bury a big spaceholder file on my NBI and then remove it when I login stops the errors, gives me room to test package installs on the NBI etc.
--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

[#19]

So what is best?

To add about 10GB to your netboot.dmg file using hdiutil resize -size xxGB
<NetBoot.dmg file>

Or to add a space holder file!?

Thanks
Steve

[nessts]

I never figured out how to resize the DMG after Leopard, so this is what
works for me, it makes no difference either way as far as I can tell, if
the resize command shared on the list really works, it would be a user
preference I would think. but this way I don't have to remember to grow
the disk image its just there. but I do have to remember to remove the
space holder. so that might be inconvenient for some.
-- Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

[rob_potvin]

Why does this error keep on coming up? Has anyone fixed this? I increased the size, added another 10GB and still I get this error.

Any idea how to fix this?

Cheers

[#22]

To expand on this same issue… how long on average, is it taking for your imaging process to complete? On 10.6.x the OS, Office, and a handful of other small packages took about 22 minutes… I am at 1hr and 10 minutes and the OS still is not done yet!

Thank you
Steve

[rob_potvin]

same here

On average it would take 30min for everything under 10.6.x now its 1.5+ hours and I just can't wait!

With deploy studio the same image from instaDMG is about 18min

There is something wrong!

[CasperSally]

I just created my first 10.7.x netboot environment, and am getting this out of space error (as well as iCloud popping up).

How did you guys get around the out of space error? I see earlier that adding to the Netboot image file size didn't help everyone.

[rob_potvin]

@CasperSally in NetBoot service on your server just check mark diskless

[CasperSally]

@rpotvin, thanks but I already selected diskless

[CasperSally]

I booted to my 10.7.3 netboot and in disk utility I can't unmount the drive so it appears not to be diskless, even though I have that box checked on the server.

I even recreated the netboot environment from scratch but same issue.

If anyone has any other suggestions of what to try I'd appreciate it. So frustrating. I mis netinstall.

[CasperSally]

-removed double post

[dcolville]

Hi @CasperSally
I'd suggest the following:

Go into "Server Admin"

Go into "Access"

Go into "Services"

Highlight "AFP" and choose "Allow All Users and Groups" and apply this, then try NetBooting again.

Diskless NetBoot uses a "NetBoot" user (as well as attempting to use Guest) to connect via AFP to use the NetBootClients share point, and at present I'd suggest this user is restricted

A better policy longterm is to "Allow" all the Netboot and Guest system users on the system into that section.

[CasperSally]

@dcolville - appreciate the response. My server was already set for all users and groups (all it does, right now, is Netboot). Such a frustrating problem. Going to try to start fresh a 3rd time.

[CasperSally]

I'm still having trouble creating a 10.7.3 diskless netboot image.

I started completely over and followed this step by step.

I turned on our newest hardware, a macbook air, ran combo update and followed the rest of the steps here

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/article.html?id=63

Once I had the composer/DMG OS file, I took it over to an imac running lion 'server' and ran the system image utility (without the casper resource netboot post action script since I did these steps on the base image already).

Same issue when netbooting, the statup volume out of space error, confirmed in disk utility can't unmount Macintosh HD. I'm pretty frustrated and have been spinning my wheels on this... this is the 4th netboot image I've tried to create now.

I've tried stopping/starting netboot as well as propogate of permissions. Diskless and Client Data are both checked in my netboot settings.

[CasperSally]

ah finally reread the thread and realized dcolville was right. My AFP permissings were restricted (I was looking at the whole server access before, not specific to AFP).

At the time I set up the server, this was set for just the casper install/admin account access because I didn't want students to have AFP access to the dist point also hosted on the box.

Is there a way to have both, diskless but restricted AFP access to distribution point hosted on same box? If not, may be time to look into the netboot appliance.

[dcolville]

Hi Sally,
(Edited my post for clarity)

First suggestion is to:

Go into Server Admin,

In Server Admin's "Preferences' section (part of Server Admin menu), be sure to enable "Show System Accounts in Users and Groups Browser"

Once this is set - go into Server Admin - Settings - Access, and add all users who have a "Netboot" username - netboot100 up to netboot150, plus whichever groups *should* have access rights to the server - so in the end you should have net boot 100-150, plus your casper install/admin account access users or groups.

Give that a go - I've tracked this back on a test system and the only user accounts listed were those as above - I have seen some instances where "guest" rights are required, but I don't' believe this to be the case here.

10.7.3 server at least allows you to see the list of "AFP client connections" in Server.app during a NetBoot session - so check this list for any additional user accounts you might be using during the process.

[gregp]

Had this problem too when I was creating them on a MacBookPro2,2. When creating them on a MacPro1,1, no problem. Its fine to use these old timers, as long as mindful of when new machines have come out and the last OS update. If Apple were to release a new machine today, then will have to use the new hardware until 10.7.4 is released. Then any model should be fine since it should have the new support incorporated (however, there are exceptions to that too... if a new OS build comes out within a relatively short period of time as new hardware, then the new OS stuff may not be in there, so would still have to use the special new hardware builds until 10.7.5. This happened last year with some flavor of 10.6).

The way I create the NBIs (10.6 & 10.7):
- Create The Perfect Image on the build machine. - pmset hibernatemode 0
- launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
- Reboot to TDM and connect to another Mac. - Delete: /var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_i386 & dyld_shared_cache_x86_64
- Delete: /var/vm/sleepimage (if it exists). - Build the NBI (we use System Image Utility).
- Use hdiutil to resize the DMG (I usually crank it up a few extra GB). See above posts for syntax.
- Copy the NBI folder to the NetBoot server & configure it to be enabled.

Haven't tried the MBA, but expect may be some problems unless the image takes into account en0/en1 differences with its ethernet interface.

If the hibernation isn't turned off, then it wants to make a file of the size of RAM. If you leave that file in place, then you waste space, plus if you boot a machine with more RAM than the machine where you created the NBI image, then more problems.

This is what works for us. Not going to guarantee it'll work elsewhere, since there seems to also be a little black magic mixed in there.

Our main NetBoot server is 10.4.11. Have some others at various levels of 10.6.x and all work fine for serving images of any version.

[CasperSally]

After cruising along for about a week with our 10.7.3 Netboot, all of a sudden some strange things are happening.

Our larger non compiled images aren't completing properly. No imaging errors in JSS, but they reboot to apple gray screen with spinning circle. While troubleshooting, I happened to notice on one of the attempts I got 'out of space' error again (ugh!).

I can confirm I am diskless (my compiled images are coming down block copy, I can unmount the HD).

Is this a sign maybe I need to run "hdiutil resize -size xxGB
<NetBoot.dmg file>"? I'm going to try that next, as I'm not sure what else to try.

I still miss Netinstall!

[nessts]

i put a large empty dmg called spaceholder in my netboot images, so i can do installation testing of things like adobe cs so i just remove that and it stops the error messages.