Netbooting new pre-installed LionMacs

[abz_mungul]

Hi

Just wanted to know if anyone is experiencing issues with Netboot any new Macs with Lion pre-installed?

[UbiquitousChris]

Yes! We have suddenly lost the ability to do netbooting across subnets on all machines that come preinstalled with Lion and that have received the firmware updates that give machines the ability to do internet recovery. We can run the bless command with no error, but when we reboot the machine we get nothing but the flashing globe. All older machines still work with this method so I know it's not something with the network.

Unfortunately I have yet to find a way around this. : But you are not alone.

-Chris W.

[ImAMacGuy]

we put all of our subnets as helper IPs on the switches, we don't have to do any of the bless stuff.

[rtrouton]

Try the following bless command, substituting ip.address.here and NetBoot-Set-Name-Here.nbi with your actual IP and NetBoot set:

sudo bless --netboot --booter tftp://ip.address.here/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/NetBoot-Set-Name-Here.nbi/i386/booter --kernel tftp://ip.address.here/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/NetBoot-Set-Name-Here.nbi/i386/mach.macosx --kernelcache tftp://ip.address.here/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/NetBoot-Set-Name-Here.nbi/i386/x86_64/kernelcache --options "rp=nfs:ip.address.here:/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0:NetBoot-Set-Name-Here.nbi/NetInstall.sparseimage"

That may allow your new Macs to boot from your NetBoot servers.

Associated post: http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/netbooting-across-subnets/

[abz_mungul]

Glad to know im not the only one!

As a work around I've pushed the netboot image to an external HD and get the Macs to boot to that which seems to work...but obviously is a pain!

[seanjsgallagher]

I am having the same issue with mac's that shipped with Lion. I contacted Apple and was told it is a known issue that is hit or miss with the net booting of newer devices that shipped with lion. They said a firmware update will be needed to fix this, but could not give me a date.

[nessts]

i am having similar issues with computers that previously netbooted well, after applying the MBP firmware update. i find that holding option and then choosing the netboot from there works more often if rebooting from the OS after a bless/sys prefs setting.

[striderida1]

Has Apple made any progress on this issue? Funny how in every thread you read about this some bozo just puts "you have to put in an ip helper on your switches" like that is something no one here did years ago already. Even with helpers in place this newer firmware just cant seem to complete the netboot. The server even sends back an acknowledgement to the client during the netboot process which is the odd part, so it's not even a connectivity issue to the server...the firmware just flat out rejects it. Something i have been trying to play around with in my network was to have a DNS redirect put in place to somehow try to hijack the internet recovery to the Casper server...but so far no luck :-/

[kplatzer]

I finally found a post on a different forum helped me to successfully netboot across subnets again by first switching the NetBoot service protocol from NFS to HTTP and then using this bless command in Terminal on the client: sudo Bless --netboot --booter tftp://xx.xx.xx.xx/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/YourNetBootImage.nbi/i386/booter --kernelcache tftp://xx.xx.xx.xx/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/YourNetBootImage.nbi/i386/x86_64/kernelcache --options 'rp=http://xx.xx.xx.xx/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/YourNetBootImage.nbi/NetBoot.dmg' --nextonly