Skip to main content
Question

macOS Upgrade During Enrollment

  • January 31, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 40 views
M
Forum|alt.badge.img+7

Hi all,

 

We have a fleet of Mac Minis that were left on Sierra (10.12.6) by another department. This year we're taking over these and plan to manage them via Jamf Pro, We wanted to upgrade the OS to allow us to use NoMAD.

 

We tried to package the "Install macOS Big Sur.app" as a DMG (not as PKG as per one of the Jamf videos we saw) and install it by calling "/Applications/Install\\ macOS\\ Big\\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --agreetolicense --forcequitapps". We tried using --eraseinstall but it wasn't supported. Unfortunately, for some reason, this isn't being executed even though the policy is scoped properly (it shows up under Management > Policies tab". We've even tried logging in to the system using the local Jamf admin account thinking it may need a user to log in or press a button to continue but no luck so far.

 

Has anyone done something similar and succeeded? Or are we doomed to doing the upgrade via USB?

    3 replies

    Fluffy
    Forum|alt.badge.img+10
    • Fluffy
    • Honored Contributor
    • January 31, 2022

    You may want to take a look at grahampugh's erase-install. You can either download an installer or point it to an existing one.

      sdagley
      Forum|alt.badge.img+25
      • sdagley
      • Jamf Heroes
      • January 31, 2022

      @myu Are these Mac minis the 2014 model or newer? Big Sur lists Mac mini support as 2014 or later.

      And running the startosinstall tool does require a logged in user.

      While normally I'd agree with @Fluffy that erase-install is handy as an all-in-one tool for downloading and installing a macOS upgrade it doesn't handle installer downloading on Sierra. Instead I'd suggest using @kc9wwh's  https://github.com/kc9wwh/macOSUpgrade which is designed to have Jamf Pro downlaod the macOS installer. And rather than package Big Sur yourself, you can grab one of Apple's pre-built .pkg installers from https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-big-sur-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/

       

        M
        Forum|alt.badge.img+7
        • myu
        • Author
        • Contributor
        • February 9, 2022

        So it turns out our method was working ... it just took the OS ~4hrs to install  :-(  We found out about it when we left some machines running overnight and when we came back in the following morning, they were all showing the Big Sur login screen.

        Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement