NetBoot/SUS Appliance now available

[eric_krause]

We are excited to share a NetBoot and Software Update appliance that we have found useful at JAMF. We have provided a document along with the appliance that describes how to use it with the Casper Suite.

Here is the description from the product PDF:

The Appliance creates an Ubuntu virtual machine (VM) that acts as a NetBoot server and/or SUS. This allows you to host a NetBoot server and/or internal SUS using any system that supports virtualization. The Appliance also installs a web application that can be used to easily manage your NetBoot server and/or SUS.

You can find the appliance's page on JAMF Nation here: NetBoot/SUS Appliance.

[rtrouton]

Can the NetBoot server host diskless NetBoot images? I have three SIU-created NetBoot utility disks that I'd love to be able to move over to this solution, but they need to be able to run as diskless.

[talkingmoose]

You guys... You guys are just too good to us.

[rob_potvin]

Awesome! That is just so awesome! Thanks guys that rocks!

Cheers

[rtrouton]

Do you need to be a current JAMF customer to use this or is it free for anyone to use? I'm asking because I'm not seeing anywhere you need to put in a registration code and the download link works without needing to sign into anything.

[rockpapergoat]

i'd imagine it's all free since, it's based on open source stuff. there's some licensing text in some of the scripts on disk, but i didn't see anything specific beyond that.

[jake]

Hi Rich -

The appliance is for anyone to use. We have documentation around how to integrate with Casper, but others are welcome to use it as well.

Regarding your previous question, your existing nbi's should work just fine.

Thanks!

[rob_potvin]

I am setting it up right now! Awesome! You guys rock!

[rtrouton]

Thanks, Jake. This is a great gift to the Mac community, especially for those folks who are being told "virtualize, virtualize!" by their IT management.

[tlarkin]

I'd say shut up and take my money, but not applicable here. Great work guys reading the documentation now.

[eric_krause]

Hi Rich,

To answer your question about diskless NetBoot:

We made the assumption that we would always want to boot in diskless mode. As the client begins to NetBoot it will mount scratch space on the appliance, as the client reboots or shutdowns from NetBoot the scratch files are deleted from the appliance. Any existing NBI should work, just copy the folder up and enable.

[rtrouton]

Thanks, Eric. That's just what I was hoping for, glad to hear I don't even have to fiddle with config files to enable diskless NetBoot.

[tlarkin]

I have a question, by branches (is what it calls it in the documentation) does that mean I can also cascade multiple SUS appliances? Right now I have one parent and 5 children SUS. I update the parent, the children are cascaded to.

Is that possible?

Thanks,
Tom

[jarednichols]

These would be separate branches completely. There's no "cascade" functionality. Here's the Reposado Git: https://github.com/wdas/reposado
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/reposado

[tlarkin]

These would be separate branches completely. There's no "cascade" functionality. Here's the Reposado Git: https://github.com/wdas/reposado Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/reposado

I figured as much. I really love my enable it once and forget about it set up. Though, if it uses standard catalog files for the SUS service you probably still could set up cascading servers with this appliance. I won't have time to test it out so I cannot be sure it will work.

[timsutton]

Awesome. Setup was a breeze and it's working out of the box. I use Reposado already but am always looking for an excuse to move NetBoot off OS X Server.

Are there plans to incorporate the more sophisticated logic available on OS X Server, like .nbi's for multiple architectures, MAC address filtering, etc.?

[rockpapergoat]

you should be able to replicate at your remote sites. check this thread for some clues: http://groups.google.com/group/reposado/browse_thread/thread/94ed01287b5bab21/f6707057d9812674

join the list, and the group will help you sort it out.

[timsutton]

Has anyone tried to Netboot a DeployStudio Runtime? A 10.7.3 NetInstall worked perfectly, but a 10.7.2-based Runtime I pulled off my NetBoot server kernel panics on a 2010 Mac Mini, in the "imageboot_mount_image" function in the kernel.

[cbrewer]

Is there a way to run multicast ASR from this appliance?

[bentoms]

Awesome! Thanks Jamf & Greg!

[bwarsing]

How is AFP implemented? Is it netatalk?

[eric_krause]

Netatalk is what was used for AFP. Once you have the appliance installed you can view a list of the components used on the About page.

[rtrouton]

A picture of the open-source acknowledgements page is here:

http://twitpic.com/8glygw

[bentoms]

Does the SUS component have any proxy support?

[Kumarasinghe]

Thanks JAMF.

[gregneagle]

"Does the SUS component have any proxy support?"

Assuming you mean can the SUS use a web-proxy to retrieve updates from Apple: Reposado, which is the underlying software for the SUS component does have web-proxy support:

https://raw.github.com/wdas/reposado/master/docs/reposado_preferences.txt

You'd add something like:

<key>AdditionalCurlOptions</key> <array> <string>proxy = "web-proxy.yourcompany.com:8080"</string> </array>

to the Reposado preferences.plist. There's no GUI for that, though.

[gregneagle]

Further to my previous reply:

As the shelluser:

sudo vi /var/lib/reposado/preferences.plist

and insert the AdditionalCurlOptions. Be careful. Breaking this file breaks Reposado, so you may want to back it up first with:

sudo cp /var/lib/reposado/preferences.plist /var/lib/reposado/preferences.plist.saved

-Greg

[Kumarasinghe]

Please add Australian Time Zones as well. It's missing at the moment.

[donmontalvo]

JAMF, you're so...so...soo....SOOOO...ahhh...do you have a cigarette?

I love you.

[Chris]

It's -15°C, but this gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Thanks guys!

[martin]

This is great! I just finished the installation and configuration of Reposado on Linux :-/. Oh well I'll start over with the new appliance :)

[rtrouton]

timsutton,

Try renaming the DS NetBoot disk image from NetInstall.dmg to NetInstall.sparseimage and see if it now boots.

@bruienne just posted that on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/bruienne/status/166896954687754241

http://twitter.com/#!/bruienne/status/166898268457013250

[timsutton]

Thanks Rich. Yeah, we're sorting this out on ##osx-server this morning. I'm going to look at the possibility of adding multiple .nbi's as well, when I have spare time.

[rtrouton]

For those interested, here's how to host DeployStudio .nbi's on NetSUS:

http://glarizza.posterous.com/jamfs-netsus-appliance-netboot-in-a-box

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/modifying-jamfs-netsus-to-host-deploystudio-netboot-boot...

[glarizza]

There are also multiple write-ups that have been started to help you out with all the bits you find in this appliance. I've got one here --> http://bit.ly/net-sus Rich has a couple here --> http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/converting-jamfs-netbootsus-appliance-to-vmware/ and Greg has a bunch of information on his site --> http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/netbootreposado-appliance/

[treydock]

This is great! Thanks. This may be just what I need to convince my superiors to pay for Enterprise Mac software.

Is it within the licensing agreement to make a CentOS clone of this? This would be a great place to co-locate with my Munki/Munkiserver setup.

Again, Thanks!
- Trey

[martin]

Two bugs so far:

1. The URLs in the catalogs are incorrect after changing the IP address of the server. I noticed that the preferences file of reposed has not been updated. It still points to the old address. The /var/lib/reposed/preferences.plist file shows indeed that the LocalCatalogURLBase is still the old address. It seems that changing the SUS address does not update the preferences file.

2. DNS Server 2 stays empty while /etc/resolv.conf shows multiple DNS servers.

It also would be nice to see an status when clicking on the Sync button (like in the dashboard).

[martin]

This is not going to work at all. Why? Because DocumentRoot of the site is configured at /svr/SUS/html/content/catalogs/ and downloads are stored in /svr/SUS/html/content/downloads/ so clients can never access the download. Before I start changes all kind of things I'm waiting for an response from JAMF support.

The client tries to download the file that's in the link but that shows a 404 Not Found. I noticed that the root of the web server is /svr/SUS/html/content/catalogs but downloads is at /svr/SUS/html/content/download so the client can never access the file.

The apache config file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default is configured with DocumentRoot as /svr/SUS/html/content/catalogs/. This is not going to work.

[holger]

Is there a way to serve multiple Netboot-Images? Like one for Casper, other for AppleHardwareTests?

Cheers,
Holger

PS: Your work is great, thank you!

[rtrouton]

Holger,

I just put that in as a feature request, as I'd like the same capability. For anyone else that wants to host multiple NetBoot images from the NetBoot/SUS Appliance simultaneously, please up-vote this feature request:

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/featureRequest.html?id=261