Upgrade to High Sierra .app question

[JeyT]

Hi, pretty new to Jamf, trying to upgrade some of our Macs to High Sierra. Tried to find an answer but I am obviously missing something here. How are you getting the installer .app file on the clients to run the startosinstall script? When I upload a .app file it gets compressed to .tar, can't run a script with startosinstall. I am able to cache down a .dmg or .pkg but then the startosinstall script doesn't work. Plan is to cache the installer into the "Waiting Room" directory, then just add another policy with the startosinstall script to initiate to my scope. I see all these postings using the script with the path leading to the .app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall. I'm learning, but I can't figure this one out. Thanks

[bramstedtb]

We use composer to make a .pkg that places the Install MacOS High Sierra.app in the /Applications folder. We then create a policy to run the .pkg we created and then use the execute command section of our policy to run the startosinstall command.

[JeyT]

Thank you bramstedtb. So I am dragging the .app install into composer. Creating a .pkg from that. What settings am I doing in composer to that puts the .app in the Applications folder? Can the location be modified? Is this procedure documented? Apologies for my questions, as I can't seem to find a step by step on this process. I see it mentioned all over the place, but don't see what settings I need to set to have the .pkg perform this step.

[bramstedtb]

I leave the installer in the Applications folder on my packaging machine, and then drag it into Composer, on the left side under Sources. This will create a new package with just the installer in the Applications folder. I then export it as a .pkg.

My screenshot is of a Mojave installer, but it's the same process for High Sierra. You can set the app location anywhere you want. The important part is just that you want a package to place the .app installer, and that you call startosinstall from the correct location. I was looking for documentation on how to do this, but I can't find any either.