Netboot newbie

Define "seemless".

What do you want it to do?

Craig E

We use netboot for all of our imaging with a JAMF NetInstall image set. It works well for us. Not sure what else you might be looking for...

--
John Wetter
Technology Support Administrator
Technology & Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools
952-988-5373
john_wetter at hopkins.k12.mn.us

Jim,

We are experimenting also with making an automated process through Netboot.
We could do with advise on improving what we current have so any tips would
be welcome.

We fist rename out computers and add them into the JSS manually. We name out
computers based on site and room location so that it helps with remote
management and with organizing the JSS

Once we have the correct names and in the JSS we setup the school and add
the appropriate configuration and Autorun information using the Mass Edit
feature.

We can then tell the computers to Netboot via Capser Remote to the Netboot
server and then the Netboot takes over for stage 1 of the imaging process.

Stage 1: Netboot / Partition disk / Deploy Recovery OS (ROS) to the Restore
partition.

We have a pre-script that partitions the disk in two drives once it has
Netbooted and then Netrestore takes over and restores an the ROS to the
newly created Restore partition. Once that's complete it then reboots to the
ROS and thats Stage 2.

Stage 2: Primary OS deployment and packages

Once it boots to the ROS it automatically runs Casper imaging and restores
the primary OS and delivers he appropriate packages and runs post scripts to
bind to AD ad OD.

That a snapshot a what we have started to do. But there is probably is a
better way...faster way of making this automated.

Regards,

Ben W Young.

One important thing to keep in mind is the steps you need to take if On 3 Nov 2008, at 01:14, Jim Oring, Jr. wrote:
you are going to be NetBooting across subnets. Mike Bombich (as usual) has written the definitive descriptions of the whole NetBoot process, and things to watch out for):

Troubleshooting the NetBoot process: <http://www.bombich.com/mactips/netboot.html >
NetBooting across subnets: <http://www.bombich.com/mactips/nbas.html>

The key step is for whoever administers your network hardware to make sure that routers on any subnets that will have machines NetBooting can pass BSDP traffic. If this works then everything else follows pretty easily.

I'd also recommend looking into a good administrative method for managing which machines are allowed to NetBoot and which aren't. Apple's MAC address filtering is the right thing to do (imo) but the interface for managing MAC addresses in Server Admin is, well, a bit rubbish really. If you have a large number or a high turnover of machines allowed to NetBoot then it's really easy to lose control of the MAC address filter.

In general, though, I'd say read those two articles by Mike Bombich. I've never seen anything better for understanding the NetBoot process. If you are NetBooting both PPC and Intel machines then pay close attention to the sections about NetBooting multiple architectures.

Cheers

James

~~~~~~~~~
James Partridge
Systems Development & Support (Apple)
NSMS
Oxford University Computing Service
13 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 6NN

Tel.: (01865) 273207
iChat: james.partridge at mac.com

Note that you can specify netboot servers, and even specific images through
the JSS. See Casper Suite documentation, pages 328-331.
You don't need to do anything special with routers if you specify where to
netboot from. Its only in the default netboot situation where a netbooting
computer broadcasts to the network looking for a netboot server where you
run into routing issues.

You can use the bless command to specify your netboot server and/or image.

Jim,

I have used Zen Works from Novell, DRBL from source forge, Ghost, Bombich's Netrestore, The built in apple stuff, Acronis, amongst a few others. Granted, not all of those products supports Macs, but I have used them all. At my old job I had an old HP business class desktop running open SuSe Linux and DRBL and would netboot and image Windows clients off of it.

Out of all the suites I have used in the past I can safely say that with the Apple platform there really isn't anything out there that can compete with Casper imaging. I would say Netrestore is the closest product out there. One huge pro that Netrestore has over Casper is the price tag, it is absolutely free. I still use netrestore even after having the Casper Suite. I use it to image firewire booted machines on a one to one basis and think it is a great application.

Over the summer we had to reimage 6,000 macbooks with a dual boot image of OS X 10.5.3 and Windows XP Pro. I automated it all through Casper and we got it done in about 5 weeks working 12 hour days for those full 5 weeks. There are some issues with AFP and multiple connections and of course I have yet to try out Casper's multi-casting abilities and see they just released in their first resource kit.

The mass imaging once you set it up is very automated and efficient. The problems you run into mostly at that point are Apple technology problems, and things like AFP throughput, but there are methods of making that run smoothly.

Just a note about using the Casper Netboot pieces until the next release comes out:

"I have verified a bug in 6.0 and 6.01 in which a policy (and therefore Casper Remote) are not properly setting a specified netboot server. The bug appears to occur in the translation process between the XML that the JAMF binary receives from the JSS into a command to be run. The "jamf bless" command works correctly to set a netboot server, so you can still configure a script that will set a machine to a specified NetBoot server as a workaround. (See 'jamf help bless')."

I always kept getting my default server.

Craig E

Yup, fair point – I should have made that clear. This is probably an On 3 Nov 2008, at 15:24, Miles Leacy wrote:
environment-specific thing though so it's as well to be aware of all the options.

Cheers

James

~~~~~~~~~
James Partridge
Systems Development & Support (Apple)
NSMS
Oxford University Computing Service
13 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 6NN

Tel.: (01865) 273207
iChat: james.partridge at mac.com