Unable to NetBoot more than 5 systems

[jvaleo]

Hi All,

In my environment, I am currently unable to NetBoot more than 5 systems. I have the image being served of AFP on a system with 8GB of RAM. It's the same system that's running the netboot, but I'm unable to split them out due to our environment. I've tweaked AFP to provide more threads and memory but that seems to be the bottleneck. We used to use DeployStudio and I could netboot 10 systems at a time without issue.

Any thoughts on things I should be changing or looking at?

[donmontalvo]

Server space?

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=4007

[jvaleo]

HI Don,

We have about 131GB free on one of the servers in question. We're using all managed switches, no hubs (even though some at 100mb/s vs 1000mb/s). The NBI is only about 4GB and the systems have 8GB of RAM.

Anything else to check?

[donmontalvo]

Silly question, have you tried rebooting the NetBoot server?

[ernstcs]

How dare you imply this can be fixed like Windows. ;)

[donmontalvo]

But, but, but...I didn't mean to do it...sniffle...if anyone needs me I'll be in purgatory...

[jvaleo]

Hey Don,

Yes, and we have a few hundred of these configured the same way so I know it's some sort of config. During imaging (2 systems) AFP eats up all my memory:
PhysMem: 523M wired, 411M active, 3131M inactive, 4065M used, 31M free.

[rmanly]

I was having similar issues after moving to the latest version of Casper and making my netboot image from 10.8.1. I was getting memory errors in pop-ups, errors connecting to server, and really really slow netboots.

Creating the shadow file in a RAM disk solved it for me.

Details here:
http://www.macos.utah.edu/documentation/administration/setup_netboot_service_on_mac_os_x_10.6.x_clie...

[jvaleo]

Since this is a read only file system, whats the best way to edit this?

[technicholas]

I am having the same problem!!!!!! HELP

We have two different machines. One server is for netboot and one houses the image for casper. We tried again today with a brand new Mac Mini i7 8GB of ram for the netboot and on a 1GB port and we still have problems The Casper server is a Mac Pro with 16GB of ram so I don't think that's a problem. The Casper server is bonded ethernet at 1GB. We started the machines and netbooted of them and 4 out of 30 got into the netboot we get past the flashing globe then get into the spinning globe by the apple then it sits there for a while and reboots back into the factory image.

Once it gets into the netboot it launches the JAMF software and starts imaging from the Casper server.

I don't think its a DHCP problem we have enough addresses. They are all Macbook Pro 13 in with Mac OS X Lion

HELP!

[tkimpton]

@rmanly tried that a few months ago and it completely screwed up netboot on my server to the extent I had to restore the whole OS from backup

Not saying it doesn't work, just didn't for me. I would definately recommend a full backup before trying.

[daworley]

Have you looked at DHCP filters?

[Kumarasinghe]

@tkimpton
What issues did you encounter by using RAM disk method?
Did it work for a while and had issues after a while?

Thanks

[hasaanh]

One thing I would double check is in ServerAdmin make sure that your .nbi is using NSF and not HTTP for the protocol, I have seen some that default to HTTP, and with thatr you can get some odd performance.