Trouble Netbooting Late 2013 iMac

[etippett]

We just got in our first 27" Late 2013 iMac. I'm unable to Netboot it to our NetSUS; it blinks the world and then goes to the circle/slash after a minute or so. It's getting DHCP and other clients are still netbooting without issue. The OS version on the iMac is 12E4022, so I first assumed that I needed to update my Netboot image to 10.8.5 due to a special build for this model. This did not help, even though the build in the Netboot image is now 12F45.

Has anyone experienced anything similar and can possibly shed some light?

Thanks,
Eric

[malroy]

Hi etippett,

i had no problem with the Mac OS X 10.8.5 (12F37) as Netboot image, you may need to re-download the full installer.

[Bendelaat]

If the netboot is build on older machines it misses the kernel extensions needed to instruct the hardware you are using. I think 10.8.5 doesn't contain kext for latest imac. I'd try to pull the latest build from the internet recovery and use that.

[etippett]

OK, so some progress has been made. It now finds the NetBoot server (takes much longer than any other system, though) and the blinking globe switches to the Apple logo with spinning globe. However, the spinning globe then goes away and it hangs at the grey screen with Apple logo. These are the things I did to get to this point. It finally got going after #4, so not sure if the previous three were required or not. I manually connected to my NetSUS server's SMB share (smb://yournetsus.com/netboot) in order to make these changes. I used TextWrangler for file editing.

1. Mounted the .DMG containing the NetBoot image and applied the 10.8.5 combo and supplemental updates, which I had downloaded from support.apple.com/downloads
2. Updated ./NetBootImageName.nbi/NBImageInfo.plist to include the proper model identifiers (iMac14,1 and 14,2 for late 2013 iMacs) in the DisabledSystemIdentifiers key (anyone know why all the models are listed here and the EnabledSystemIdentifiers key is empty? Seems backwards)
3. Updated ./NetBootImageName.nbi/i386/PlatformSupport.plist to include the proper model identifiers in the SupportedModelProperties key
4. Updated ./NetBootImageName.nbi/i386/PlatformSupport.plist to include the proper board-id (Mac-27ADBB7B4CEE8E61 for Late 2013 27" iMac).

Thanks to http://macops.ca/customizing-hardware-model-filters-for-netboot/#more-198 for showing me how to get the board-id

ioreg -l | grep board-id

Any further ideas? Perhaps I do need to pull the full installer for this model via internet recovery and use that to update my NetBoot??? That would be pretty frustrating, considering that 10.8.5 was released after this iMac. Also, since that is a machine-specific build, will that NetBoot work for other systems or will I then need two different NBI's?

Thanks, all.
Eric

[Kumarasinghe]

We always do a clean install and capture the NetBoot image.
Ours is 10.8.5 Build (12F45) and it works well.

[Bendelaat]

I'm curious, how do you update the dmg as you describe?

1. Mounted the .DMG containing the NetBoot image and applied the 10.8.5 combo and supplemental updates, which I had downloaded from support.apple.com/downloads

Sounds like a cool and handy trick!

[etippett]

OK, looks like everyone was right with using the full installer. I've got this working now. Here are the steps I went through:

1. Restored my netboot.dmg to a partition on an external drive.
2. Booted the iMac from its recovery partition
3. Selected to reinstall Mac OS X and chose the external drive as the destination
4. After going through the necessary reboots and what not, booted from the iMac's internal drive
5. Ran System Image Utility to build a NetBoot image from the external drive (I did some cleanup first, such as deleting caches, the sleepimage, etc)
6. Manually edited the NBImageInfo.plist to change the IsEnabled, IsDefault, and SupportsDiskless keys to true/enabled
7. Uploaded to NetSUS, chose the proper NBI, restarted service, and verified ability to NetBoot

Hope this helps someone else!
Eric

[etippett]

Oh, @Bendelaat: It's pretty simple. Mount your NetSUS's SMB share (smb://yournetsus.com/netboot) and open the nameofyournetbootimage.nbi folder. In there you'll find a .DMG. Mount it. Then run the installer for your OS update and when you get to the screen for choosing where you want to install, just choose the mounted volume of your DMG. When the install is complete, unmount the DMG, disconnect from the server, and you're good to go.