mavericks netboot image

[franton]

Anyone had any issues creating a 10.9 net boot image? I ask because System Image Utility on any OS is refusing to accept my .dmg as a valid source.

[stevewood]

@lpnicholas What are the steps you are taking to create the NBI? I looked back through this thread, but don't see where you've stated your process. I just went through and created a new NBI set here with 13A3017 and I've got it booting a new 15" MacBook Pro Retina, a new 13" MacBook Air, and a new MacMini. I'd be glad to list out the steps I took in order if that might help.

[lpnicholas]

@stevewood - I first had to extract the 13A2093 installer from the late 2013 13" MBPr machine... (shipped with 10.9.0--just arrived a week ago) using this method: http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/downloading-lion-os-installers-for-your-specific-mac-model/

Then, I created an installer on an external drive from that InstallESD.dmg so that at the very least, I could install Casper Imaging on that and boot to the clients from there (nothing else would boot to them--would just get the prohibitory sign).

I figured if I could do that, I could create a netboot image, since I would have been successful creating an image of the same build on an external drive.

Next, I took one of the machines out of the box, set it up as a netboot image (Casper Imaging launches straight away, under root user, etc) and captured it with Composer. I then used SIU to make an NBI, like usual. This is usually a really straight-forward process, but it fails every time. I get an "error 2" every time. I have tried every which way--on a server running the 13A2093 build, (and the 13A603 build, just to try it), and a client machine running the 13A2093 build. No dice. Fails the same way every time--error 2.

@Ziegler was just saying that he was able to do it--I think maybe I am missing a step here. He said to use SIU on the exact version of mavericks that you captured (I did this), but that he captured with Composer on a 13A603-bulid machine (which I don't think I did--i just captured it on the 13A2093.) I also did make sure that the NetBoot partition name and the current boot partition were named differently.

The only thing that I didn't do was capture the 13A2093 build on a 13A603 build machine with Composer. I will try that tomorrow.

I hope I am making sense... I feel like a total moron! :P

[stevewood]

@lpnicholas Thanks for laying it out like that. Let me tell you the process I use each time I need to make a new NBI set. I had to go through this today, as I just received a new 15" MBP Retina in. This shipped with 10.9 13A3017, like I mentioned before. Here are the steps I took, all of them on the same 15" MBP Retina:

- Connected an external USB drive to the laptop and booted the laptop into Recovery mode.
- Formatted the USB drive (it was brand new out of the box so I had to partition it)
- Used the Recovery mode to install directly onto that USB drive.
- After the OS was installed on the USB drive, I booted from that USB drive and did the following:

- Ran all Software Updates - Installed Casper Imaging and Casper Admin - Enabled the root user - Logged in as root user - Set the dock with apps I wanted - Set Casper Imaging to start at login - Open Casper Imaging and set preferences - Open Safari and navigate to my JDS: https://jds.yourdomain.com - Accepted security certificate from JDS in Safari and set to Trust Always - Boot from internal drive on MBP

- Once booted from internal drive, I ran thru setup assistant to get to desktop.
- Open the USB drive and deleted all apps from Applications and Utilities except what was absolutely necessary
- Emptied trash
- Open Terminal from internal drive, change directory to work on the USB drive and cleared:

- /Library/Caches - /Library/Dictionaries - /Library/Fonts - /System/Library/Caches - /private/var/vm/

- Opened SIU from /System/Library/CoreServices
- Created NBI by pointing at the USB drive

I've uploaded that image to my NB server (10.7) and I've been able to boot three different machines: the 15" MBP Retina, a MacBook Air, and a MacMini.

I find that as long as everything, and I mean everything, is done from the one machine I've had very few, if any, problems creating NBIs. It's when I've setup the external drive and then plugged into a different machine that I have had problems.

Oh, and after I've made sure the the NBI works, I put the Retina back into Recovery mode and restore the internal drive to factory.

There is not a need to capture the OS with Composer just to create an NBI. You can just use SIU directly.

I hope this helps you out. You can find more information about shrinking the size of your NBI here:

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=847

And about removing the VM image (sleep image) here:

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=7091

Let me know if anything is not clear.

[elislider]

This has been an issue for me too trying to make a Mavericks NetBoot image (might I add, an extremely frustrating one).
After configuring my netboot image on an iMac, I tried the following and all would result in "no sources found":
- captured image with composer, mounted on a macbook
- captured image with composer, mounted on mac mini server
- captured image with disk utility, mounted on a macbook
- captured image with disk utility, mounted on mac mini server
- thunderbolt iMac in target disk mode to macbook
- thunderbolt->firewire on iMac in target disk mode to firewire on macbook
- running SUI manually or through server app

Since I couldn't easily rename the mounted disk inside the DMGs I captured, the ONLY thing that has worked so far is to mount the iMac (with configured netboot build) via thunderbolt to my Macbook and then rename the mounted disk from Macintosh HD to NetBoot...

What really sucks is I am forced to do this because my 10.7 and 10.8 netboot images from my older server do not work when I move the .nbi folders over to the 10.9 server...

Apple, seriously get your shit together.

[dan_kubley]

Hey all,
I wanted to provide an update to the issue with System Image Utility on Mavericks. After messing around with trying to get SIU to recognize the mounted Netboot DMG, I finally had a fore-head smacking breakthrough. As others have stated, changing the name of the mounted volume seems to solve the problem, but that process can sometimes be difficult. After several Google searches, I still could not find the right command. Instead, I changed the name of the computer hard drive from Macintosh HD to Server HD, and then re-mounted the Netboot DMG. Now, SIU properly recognizes the image!

This looks to be a Mavericks only issue at this point, as there is some sort of display issue with the mounted volume. When my hard drive was named Macintosh HD, the mounted volume also showed up as Macintosh HD on the Desktop. Using the df -h command in Terminal, the mounted volume actually was Macintosh HD 1, but was displaying on the desktop differently. I am assuming SIU was getting confused by this. Hopefully, this information will prevent a few headaches for those people willing to just rename the hard drive on the computer.

[elislider]

Could it just be that System Image Creator has been silently modified to just block drives labeled "Macintosh HD"?

[jwojda]

I just renamed the mounted drive to netboot, and that resolved it, just through finder, no magic or anything, just rename.
worked for me on 4 10.9.x Netboots thus far (two for each os build due to forking).

[clrlmiller]

I don't seem to have any trouble generating a NetBoot Image Folder but it doesn't seem to be shared out from my NetBoot Server. Has anyone successfully used a 10.9.1 NBI from an OS X 10.7.5 Lion Server?

My 10.7.5 and 10.8.5 NBI work without any issues but I can't seem to get the Lion Server to also show the 10.9 NBI as an available option. Both the 10.7 and 10.8 NBI show as options w/o issue. I suppose the question is really: Will a Lion based server support a 10.9 NBI? Or, must I bite the bullet and upgrade my server? Can anyone report this works under 10.9, 10.8 or 10.7 Server?

[Kumarasinghe]

We have a DEV NetBoot server (OS X 10.7.4) and 10.9.1 NetBoot works fine.
10.9 NetBoot image should work on OS X Lion servers without any issues.

[clrlmiller]

Thank You for confirmation Kumarashinghe !!! I've actually followed the advice and simply renamed the Source drive for my 10.9.1 NBI to the advised "NetBoot". Our 10.7.5 Server is now successfully advertising the new NBI and is working just fine. I just tweaked the Network name to "NetBoot9" to differentiate it from our "NetBoot1075" and "NetBoot1085" Images. At this point my NetBoot issue appears to be resolved.

Word of advice to anyone else just setting this up. Ensure your share protocol is "NFS" and "Diskless" are also checked ON. I'd forgotten to check the Diskless option and every system kept crashing when attempting to make any changes to the system's local drive(s).

[boberito]

I'm bringing this topic back from a few months ago.

I'm having the same problem. When I attempt to make a Netboot NBI image, I receive the error "Image Creation Failed. The operation couldn't be completed. (System Image Utility error 2.)"

I have 1 MacBook Air booted into Target Disk mode and mounted via Thunderbolt cable to another MacBook Air and then running System Image Utility to try to create the Netboot image. I've renamed the computer mounted in Target Disk mode from Macintosh HD to Netboot HD. I've also hit the Customize button and tried that way as well. No luck. Everything is updated to 10.9.5.

Am I missing something? I know I've done this in the past with no problems at all.

[bentoms]

@boberito, can you give AutoCasperNBI a go? https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=11356

It may not work, but we may be able to see where it failed.