Yosemite: Network Interfaces Names Changing, etc., on Newly Imaged Mac with Casper Imaging

[johnklimeck]

Systems Prefs > Network

Anyone seeing anything like this:

For some unknown reason, after imaging with Casper Imaging, and logging in for the firs time, Systems Prefs > Network,
the "Ethernet" network interface is labeled "Wi-Fi". When you try to add Ethernet, you cannot, because it in reality it is Ethernet but named Wi-Fi.

Adding or adjusting new network interfaces is subsequently just a mess. One has to completely remove all network interfaces and re-add. A pain.

Very weird. I am not sure if this is a Casper Imaging thing, a Yosemite OS X thing, or a combo of the two. If I do a Casper Imaging with only the OS 10.10, it's fine. But if it's the full Configuration, with apps and scripts, this is what happens.

It could be the OS 10.10 image. I am going to redo the base OS 10.10 image on a recently shipping Haswell iMac, and see what I get

[samfisher]

I have seen this before when applying a base image created on a MacBook Air (where en0 is WI-Fi) onto a device like a non-retina MacBook Pro (where en0 is Ethernet and en1 is Wi-Fi).

Delete /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist and reboot. That should solve that problem for you on a one-off basis. To solve it more permanently, delete it from your base image.

[samfisher]

Just read that a little more closely - funny that it is happening only when you apply a full configuration. Have you got a package that might be overwriting NetworkInterfaces.plist for some reason?

[davidacland]

I used to get this a lot when I made a base image on one Mac model and deployed it to something else. We use AutoDMG to make the base image now (and previously InstaDMG) which solves the problem.

[johnklimeck · Accepted solution]

Guys,

thanks so much. yes, looks like something was going on with my base 10.10.1 image, even though it was very clean. I just downloaded the latest Yosemite Installer and used a shipping iMac (not older hardware), then decide to check out AutoDMG, I like it. Works great.

I am use to making the base image along with the admin account and all my settings, so I had to push an admin account down, and script some of my settings. Working great so far. Thanks again, john

[NowAllTheTime]

If you end up not using AutoDMG you can also run the following commands against the machine you build your base image on before capturing it to make sure that the network interfaces are automatically set up correctly for each model upon imaging (sub $yourbaseimage with the volume name of your target drive). These are from an old best practices guide for deployment that Apple used to make available to enterprise customers:

sudo defaults delete /Volumes/$yourbaseimage/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences NetworkServices

sudo defaults delete /Volumes/$yourbaseimage/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences CurrentSet

sudo defaults delete /Volumes/$yourbaseimage/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences Sets

sudo chmod 644 /Volumes/$yourbaseimage/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

sudo rm /Volumes/$yourbaseimage/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist