NetSUS Netboot Failure

[franton]

I'm running NetSUS 2.0 on our ESX environment. I've uploaded a copy of our known good netboot image taken from our existing xserves. The IP Helpers are in place, the subnet and masks are configured on the NetSUS. Everything seems rosy ...

That is until you actually netboot off it.

What happens is that it appears to netboot properly but then, every time, Casper Imaging will then almost immediately crash the computer solid. This same image works perfectly from our existing infrastructure. I kept the console open and it's not returning any useful info that I can see.

Suggestions?

[franton · Accepted solution]

Gah, it's not booting the image as diskless despite it working disklessly from our xserves.

This appears to be the answer: http://www.macos.utah.edu/documentation/administration/setup_netboot_service_on_mac_os_x_10.6.x_clie...

[dlondon]

Hi,

Apologies if I'm going in the wrong direction ...

For diskless to work you need to get a AFP mount back to your NetBoot server

When your client Netboots and you get to the desktop you should see something like this if you open terminal and type mount:

Last login: Wed Oct 2 14:15:34 on console
imac30:~ root# mount
/dev/disk1s2 on / (hfs, local)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
//netboot116@IP_of_your_NetBoot_Server/NetBootClients0 on /private/var/netboot (afpfs, nobrowse)
/dev/disk0s2 on /Volumes/Macintosh HD (hfs, local, journaled)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
imac30:~ root#

If you don't see a line like //netboot116@IP_of_your_NetBoot_Server/NetBootClients0 on /private/var/netboot (afpfs, nobrowse)

with obviously the IP of your server where I wrote IP_of_your_NetBoot_Server then no way will you have diskless and so the client disk will be used instead with the result that you can't repartition, install the OS etc and things rapidly die if you try :)

What do you get?

Even if you haven't got a mount, see if you can connect using Finder on the NetBooted client. Finder > Go > Connect to Server afp://IP_of_your_NetBoot_Server

Do you get prompted for credentials? If so can you access it with e.g. admin credentials for the server?

What I'm getting at with the second one is whether AFP is available at all.

Finally - what's in between? Firewall(s)? and?
Regards,

David