Upload Big Sur?

@tcandela See the following article for links to InstallAssistant.pkg which is an Apple packaged version of the Install MacOS Big Sur.app which can be uploaded to your on-prem DP or a Jamf Cloud DP: https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-big-sur-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/

@sdagley thanks. So to make sure I understand this correctly, I downloaded the INSTALLASSISTANT.PKG 11.3.1, so I would upload this to my JAMF location?
Create a policy and include this INSTALLASSISTANT.PKG, and once a scoped computer has this policy assigned it will place the 11.3.1 Big Sur installer in the computers /Applications folder??

@tcandela Correct, if you deploy one of those InstallAssistant.pkg files what you end up with on the target Mac is Install MacOS Big Sur.app in the /Applications folder.

@sdagley yep, came back today and the mac i scoped out the installpackage.pkg had big sur in /applications So this is the only way or new easy way to do it for big sur?

@tcandela New easy way - Apple creates the install package for you. You could also use the softwareupdate tool --fetch-full-installer option to download the latest installer, but if you prefer to install via .pkg from Jamf Pro (say if you had a requirement to install a specific version) then this is the easiest way.

I used softwareupdate command to download the installer. Not perfect but worked for 160 macs. Any issues just boot into safe mode to get the download going. All my users are remote and got them all updated in a couple of weeks.

thanks, I'll test out both options. fetch installer command and the https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-big-sur-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/

@james.spencer I put the following command (see last line below) in the FILES AND PROCESSES --> EXECUTE COMMANDS and each time it runs on the test machine i check the policies log for the details of it's execution, and it always says

not a valid command --fetch-full-installer not a valid command --full-installer-version

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 11.3.1

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version X.Y.Z works for getting the Installer into the applications folder of the mac but anyone able to get update rolled out without without user interaction?

this command will run the installer /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --forcequitapps --agreetolicense

Can you do the startosinstall option if the system pulls the full installer down via VPP? It was my understanding I'd have to package it myself to use startosinstall

@k3vmo The softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer command is not pulling down the installer via VPP, which used to get you a stub installer lacking the parts required to use startosinstall, it's doing the download from Apple's software update servers. You get the full macOS installer, just as if you'd downloaded one of the packages listed at https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-big-sur-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/

you could just have a Jamf Self Service item that links direct to the download in the App Store

open macappstore://apps.apple.com/gb/app/macos-big-sur/id1526878132?mt=12