Problems NetBooting 2011 iMacs (12,1)

[plawrence]

Hi all

We just received a few hundred iMacs of the 2011 variety and I am having intermittent troubles NetBooting them. When told to Netboot (either by holding down the N key, or pressing Option and selecting the NBI) they will regularly just ignore the NetBoot and boot from their local hard drive. If I keep restarting them and NetBooting they eventually pick up the image and boot, some machines take longer than others. I imaged over 300 laptops last week and none of them had this issue.

I found a post with similar problems here: http://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=29577

That post indicates that its an issue with the new Firmware on the iMacs.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Or can suggest something else to try? My setup is as follows:

10.6.8 NetBoot server, hosting a 10.7.1 NetBoot Image. The server and the clients are on the same VLAN. Clients are running Boot ROM Version IM121.0047.B1E

Thanks.

Patrick Lawrence.

[bentoms]

After a very quick scan of your post, I wonder if you could try a 10.7.2 NetBoot image?

[ericbenfer]

We have seen this problem too.
If you boot to the restore partition, and then use Startup Disk to select your netboot image, it should work.

Our guess is the iMacs are finding/using the wireless network first, which does not have a netboot server in our case.

[donmontalvo]

This past week we updated our NetBoot default image to 107.2 (11C74), created using a Late 2011 MacBook Pro. We're able to boot all Late 2011 models. So far no hiccups.

[plawrence]

Thanks guys. I have 2011 Macbook Pros NetBooting fine. I'll try both of your suggestions, I'll upgrade the NetBoot image to 10.7.2 and will try booting to the restore partition