Very slow El Capitan netboot

[bazcurtis]

Hi,

I have made an El Capitan netboot image. The bar moves across to about 66% almost immediately and then takes at 30 minutes to get the last 34%, but never logs in. I'm not getting an error. Has anyone else seen this?

The netboot image is 10.11.2

I think I am running netsus 3.0.1. Can I just install v4 over the top?

Best wishes

Michael

[bentoms]

@bazcurtis How did you create the NBI?

I've not seen that issue with NBI's created with AutoCasperNBI when booting from either OSX Server, NetSUS 3.0.2 or BDSPy

[bazcurtis]

I saw a discussion that said El Capitan had to have the Netboot server whitelisted. In the same post their was some debate about if the effected an 'n' key and alt key boot.

Apple mention the error you will see if you don't whitelist and I'm not seeing that, so I assume I not hitting that issue.

I would still like to upgrade the version to v4. Can I just run the installer and it will upgrade it?

Best wishes

Michael

[bentoms]

@bazcurtis The SIP issue is csrutil & if that was the issue then NetBoot would not happen at all.

I'm not sure about a NetSUS update (as in, how or if it will resolve the issue), as my 3.0.2 NetSUS boots 10.11.x NBI's fine.

Perhaps it's a space issue? Can you clear the NBClients() folder on the NetSUS?

Can you also try verbose netbooting?

[bazcurtis]

The NetSUS server was almost full, but I found the 145GB of SUS updates and deleted them :). They were there for testing. That is another reason I want to upgrade, v4 has El Capitan SUS compatibility.

That space was saved before I uploaded the image.

I am going to make an umage with AutoCasperNBI, I was using Casper NetInstall Image Creator to make the Netboot image. I will also use AutoDMG to make the DMG file and not Composer and see how far I get.

Where is the NBClients() folder on NetSUS?

I will see where that get me and update once I tried that.

[bazcurtis]

That worked a treat thanks all for the feedback.

[bentoms]

@bazcurtis Cool!

In theory, CNIC images should be quicker than ACNBI images. So not sure if @nick lnows what's up.

[ivanlovisi]

Is your Netbook image served over http or ntf?
We have in our infrastructure a new NetSUSLP 4.0 and 10.11.2 NetBoot (prepared with AutoCasperNBI) and works very fine

[bazcurtis]

It was using NTF, but it is working fine now.

[nick]

@bazcurtis @bentoms - Glad to hear this is working now... In the future, if you're seeing an issue at boot time, booting in verbose mode (Command+V when booting) can help diagnose where the process is getting hung up. Let me know if you see this again, and we can troubleshoot from there.

Thanks!

Nick

[spowell01]

I just wanted to chime in here since we are getting similar behavior with our 10.11.4 NetRestore images. We have had a mac mini on 10.10.3 for some time now that serves all of our netboot/netrestore images. We recently built a new imaging lab for a new location and i setup a fresh mac mini with 10.11.4, latest server, and created a new 10.11.4 netrestore NBI via SIU. The results we see when booting this image is extremely sporadic....you might get a machine that will quickly complete the net restore process, but you might only get 1/2 to 3/4 through the boot progress bar and it will just hang. I just took the 10.10.3 netboot image that we run from our old imaging lab and confirmed that machines are able to netbook this image from the new mac mini server in a timely manner, but not the 10.11.4 netrestore images.....any thoughts on why 10.11.4 restores would be so inconsistent?

Now I'm going to try moving the 10.10.3 netboot server up to our new imaging lab and see if it can handle serving out the 10.11.4 net restore image any better than the fresh 10.11.4 server.

[spowell01]

and our 10.11.4 net restore image seems to complete in a decent amount of time when served from our new location with the mini thats running Yosemite.....something is up with 10.11.4 server and net restore from what we are seeing.

My next plan of action is to take the new mac mini that has an SSD and 10.11.4, bring it back down to 10.10.X, and just not look at 10.11.4 for our netboot server yet.

[bentoms]

@spowell01 Thanks for the updates & keep them coming!

[spowell01]

We currently have a case open with apple. The entry level tech I spoke with went over our configuration and the process I was using for netrestore images and determined that everything looks good. he escalated the case to a sr advisor and I've ran and EDC on the server for him after replicating the issue on multiple machines.

I created a NetInstall image just to compare it to the results from netboot vs netrestore and it was just as sporadic and slow as net restore currently is. When I get additional information from apple I will update here.

[gachowski]

Are you willing to share you Apple case #?

C

[gachowski]

@spowell01

We seeing something very close can you share you Case #?

C

[spowell01]

Does apple have any concerns with sharing our case #'s? If there is not issue with sharing just the number i'll add it below...I know the one time that I posted details about an open case on jamf nation I had a not so friendly call from apple the next day about sharing details on forums ; (

[spowell01]

For what its worth, we have tried all sorts of different network configurations, isolated switches, multiple mac mini servers on both 10.11.x and 10.10.x and our netrestore image is just inconsistent and slow. Netboot is perfect, so I am creating a new netboot image that only has the Install OSX Yosemite installer on the desktop and we will see if that is a viable workaround. I will be getting a call from the sr advisor on Monday with hopefully some advice from engineering.

[gachowski]

No worries I just pointed our Apple support guy to this thread in our ticket.. it's safe that way...

C

[gachowski]

Yep just about the same as us.. Our netboot work fine however our 10.11.4 netinstaller is so slow it stalls

C

[gachowski]

That would be cool if the installer works off the netboot image, but I would guess that because of the required reboot it's won't... Good Luck !!!!

C

[spowell01]

and the new 10.11.4 netboot image boots fast and reliably....but the osx installer does not want to run from what it considers a virtual drive, it wants to be copied to a physical drive and ran from there so no go from the netboot image...back to the drawing board...

I guess I could look at the netsus appliance, I checked it out back in version 1.0 and didn't like it. since netrestore has been working reliably for us until recently, I haven't really had a need to look at it again.

[spowell01]

It seems like they may be something going on with System Image Utility on 10.11...anyone have any tricks to get system image utility on 10.10 to recognize a 10.11 installer?

[carlo_anselmi]

Hello everyone,
I've used the same source (base 10.11.4 client HDD) to create a NetBoot image with DeployStudio 1.7.3 assistant (progress bar appears and finishes in some 50 secs to load DS login window, same as previous 10.11.3 DS image) vs. AutoCasperNBI image (progress bar takes almost two minutes to reach Finder)
The image created with SIU (same source) stops at progress bar at some 50% and then hangs there.
NetRestore image created from latest "Install OS X El Capitan" installer it does not even boot
My two cents...

NetBoot service running on Server 5.1/10.11.4 (noticed SIU is still at 10.11.2 (778) there)
Test client, MBP 13" CoreDuo 8GB RAM/gigabit LAN

[spowell01]

and just so I'm clear there isn't a way to create a netrestore image with deploy studio, right? I feel like there should be some way to get SIU on 10.10.x to recognize a 10.11 installer...

[bentoms]

@spowell01 those apps do not allow for that.

But, ACNBI is based off of what SIU does as per this.

So if it's slow in SIU, I expect slow from ACNBI & am squarely pointing finger of blame @ Apple.

[spowell01]

Thanks for your responses bentoms, they are much appreciated.

I've now gotten a response from apple engineers that as of today this is a " known issue" with system image utility and 10.11. I was also told that there is a way to cobble together a 10.11 netrestore image from a 10.10 machine but of course he couldn't comment on how to accomplish that since its outside the realm of what they support. He has recommended that I install all updates as they become available since the fix for this will likely be in an incremental update. He will also be following up with me in 7 days regarding this case and any potential updates by then.

Pretty much the sh*ts since we are just starting reimaging of staff computers in our district and netrestore is the process we use; we're going to deal with a success rate of about 25% with the current netrestore situation.

[bentoms]

@spowell01 Likewise, thanks.

Hope we can get back to quicker boot & for you more NetRestores soon.

[spowell01]

and i got a call from apple engineering today and i was told, " Yep, its broken!" with reference to 10.11 net restore and net install images created from system image utility. They do not have an eta when it will be fixed but recommend that all users install all new updates as soon as they are available since thats likely how it will be patched. Definitely not the answer i wanted to hear, but quite typical of our experiences with apple over the years.

[spowell01]

no updates from my end or apples, we are just moving forward restoring laptops with bootable flash drives. Far from ideal, but its getting the job done just a lot more time consuming. I just find it hard to believe that apple could break such important functionality as net restore....where has quality control gone in their releases?

[allen_luck]

We have had the same issue up on our campus as well. 10.11.4 Netinstall & Netrestore appear broken. Out of classrooms of ~25 iMacs, we can successfully image about 5-10 at a time. Often having to kill the netrestor boot, and restart it in hopes of it starting successfully.

We have had luck with "pressing keys" during the boot process which seemed to sometimes help. Also, if we allow the computer to go idle for more than 10 / 15 mins (forget what the default screen sleep is) you will not be able to wake the screen back up. So once we finally got them started, we just had to wait and not see any progress.

Also, we had better luck hosting the netrestore images from our 1st gen retina MBP, than our actual mac pro server. Same exact image, will kernel panic if hosted on the mac pro server, despite what it's being deployed to.

[gachowski]

Just an update .. I can't get X.10.11.5 to netinstall...so I would expect that the we will see the issues netbooting X.10.11.5...

C

[ega]

I have confirmed this issue with 10.11.4 and 10.11.5. Does anyone know if the issue is the same using /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/System Image Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/imagetool
??

[gachowski]

I use/used System Image Utility.app in production and in testing .... We follow the Apple guidelines : )

C

[tinsun]

Still no news? I have the same problem, it's really inconsistent. I used to netrestore 10.9.5 and 10.10.5 from a server running 10.9, but since I couldn't get 10.11 to boot properly I upgraded the server to 10.11. Still no change.

(Note: this is not regarding netsus, of course, but the problem is the same, I guess)

[bpavlov]

OS X 10.11.6 came out which probably addresses the netbooting.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206770

[gachowski]

Looks like the Netinstall is working a little better... but only 1/2 through 1st test...

C

[sgorney]

Install and restore NBI's are working normally for me with the update.

[jmahlman]

Using our BSDPy server I'm not seeing much of a difference.

10.11.5 time to boot: 2m21s
10.11.6 time to boot: 2m13s

FYI: Images created with AutoCasperNBI.

[clyde]

I'