Usage of startosinstall command line

[mconners]

Hello Everyone,

Many of us already have a policy workflow for updating to High Sierra using the command, startosinstall. I have this version in a script, "$OSInstaller/Contents/Resources/startosinstall" --applicationpath "$OSInstaller" --agreetolicense --nointeraction --pidtosignal

This version does a silent install running from self service to install high Sierra, convert to APFS and continue on and it works really well. There is a new command, part of 10.13.4, that is a part of OS Installer and it is:

--eraseinstall, Erase all volumes and install to a new one. Optionally specify the name of the new volume with --newvolumename.

This eraseinstall switch allows for the wiping of a volume PRIOR to loading the OS. This could in theory be a replacement to netboot and allow us to run a policy that starts the OS installer and erases the local drive prior to installing the OS.

My question is, has anyone here tested this or tried this at all when it was a in beta?

[CasperSally]

@mconners I had hoped to use the new -eraseinstall flag as part of our summer workflow to get all clients to APFS/10.13, but since it requires APFS to be used, it doesn't seem very helpful for us.

[mconners]

Hello @CasperSally, thank you for the feedback.

I didn't realize it required APFS. I know we can flip that flag to APFS Convert to No, so I had experimented with it. My workflow testing on Friday did show however this new workflow worked great. To be honest, if I had to go down the APFS conversion path, I think this new workflow is worth it.