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Question

Mac Not Rebooting to Local Drive During Casper Imaging Process?

  • June 17, 2016
  • 8 replies
  • 31 views
dstranathan
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My desktop team re-imaged a MacBook Pro 13" (2015) today. The inital NetBoot and Casper Imaging process runs fine with no issues. However, the laptop insists on rebooting to the NetBoot server instead of rebooting to the local drive to compete the imaging process (i.e. the black JAMF "The imaging process is finishing installing software" screen).

If I manually force the MacBook to boot from the local drive (Option key @ boot, choose the local Macintosh HD drive via the Boot Picker, etc) then it continues with the final steps of Casper image processs. But then, after its 2nd and final reboot, once again it wants to rebbot from the NEtBoot NBI volume again.

Clearly, the NVRAM is "stuck" thinking that the MacBook should reboot from the NetBoot server by default(?). But if I hold down Option and look at the available options, the local "Macintosh HD" disk is highlighted in the Boot Picker. Weird.

Once imaged successfully (and forced to boot from the local drive) I examined the Startup Disk Preference Pane, and no disk was selected/highlighted. I had to set the Macintosh HD as the default boot volume.

This MacBook is back in production now and running/booting fine. To my knowledge, no major changes to my JAMF environment have changed recently, and other Macs are not having this issue.

Has anyone seen this issue before?

-Casper 9.8.1
-Apple Deployment Image = OS X 10.11.5 (via AutoDMG)
-NetBoot Set = OS X 10.11.5 (via AutoCasperNBI 1.3.3)
-2015 MacBook Pro 13" (SSD, Thunderbolt Ethernet dongle)
-EFI Passwords are not enabled.
-FileVault FDE is not used.

    8 replies

    roiegat
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    • roiegat
    • Valued Contributor
    • June 17, 2016

    Ok so might be an odd question...but is your netboot called "Macintosh HD" by any chance? Because that might confuse the startup post imaging.

    dstranathan
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    • dstranathan
    • Author
    • Valued Contributor
    • June 17, 2016

    No, I have a standard naming convention for my NBIs:

    Example: "JAMF OS X 10.11.5 (15F34)"

    (I dont think OS X uses the human-readable volume name anyway, does it?)

    bentoms
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    • bentoms
    • Hall of Fame
    • June 17, 2016

    @dstranathan I've not had reports of that with ACNBI, maybe it's because of JSS 9.81?

    9.92 is pretty decent. Maybe update the JSS & Casper Imaging on the NBI?

    dstranathan
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    • dstranathan
    • Author
    • Valued Contributor
    • June 17, 2016

    I have been imaging with this configuration (more or less) for months with no issues (at least in terms of designating a boot volume).

    Im going to do a battery of Capser Imaging testing later today on a few test Macs here in IT and see if I can reproduce it. Update: Just tested an older 2011 iMac and MacBook Air and neither one exhibited the issue described in my original post.

    bentoms
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    • bentoms
    • Hall of Fame
    • June 17, 2016

    @roiegat FWIW, ACNBI renames the HD to the NBI's name.

    So if that's an issue, it shouldn't be with an ACNBI NBI.

    S
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    • simon_heers
    • Employee
    • June 17, 2016

    It could possibly be an issue with El Cap devices (maybe due to SIP), or at least in this discussion it seemed to come to that conclusion.

    https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=17584

    They recommend running an After script with 'systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/Macintosh HD'

    Hope this helps.

    dstranathan
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    • dstranathan
    • Author
    • Valued Contributor
    • June 17, 2016

    I looked for similar posts bout didnt see that. Thanks @simon.heers

    Regarding setting the startup volume via a script...

    If I run this on my 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11 Macs...

    /usr/sbin/systemsetup -getstartupdisk

    it gives me...

    /System/Library/CoreServices

    (Which is the location to the boot resources themselves, not the actual boot volume).

    So do I need to be more explicit, such as...

    /usr/sbin/systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices

    S
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    • stevevalle
    • Contributor
    • June 19, 2016

    I had the same issue when I initially upgraded from v9.61 to v9.81. Now I run the following script at the very end of the imaging process which seems to have resolved the issue!

    #!/bin/sh
bless -mount /Volumes/Macintosh HD -setBoot
systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/Macintosh HD
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