Yosemite - Question Mark Folder After Imaging

[joemamasmac]

Hello All,

We have been testing Yosemite for a couple of weeks now on our campus. We are working both on upgrading existing machines, as well as imaging newly received workstations. One of the problems I have run into has popped up after imaging a couple of machines. Our master is a 27" Retina iMac, Fusion Drive and a clean image with only Screen Sharing enabled.

After imaging, the machines will go through the typical process of Image, reboot, install new software, Run Recon, shutdown and prepare to deliver to customer. The machine may sit for a day or two before being prepped for delivery. 2 of the machines in question were powered on prior to delivery and showed the folder with a question mark. This has happened a few times, and I am wondering why after multiple reboots this would happen?

Is there an issue with the recovery partition? We don't specifically create it in our images. Thoughts?

Joe

[mbayhylle]

So you don't have a recovery partition that you can boot into? Can you boot from a flash/Thunderbolt/NetBoot Server?
I had a number of iMacs/MacBooks that had difficulty booting (no question mark folder, though) after the Yosemite install (a couple were freshly imaged and a couple were upgrades) and had to clear the PRAM (at boot, hold down apple+option+P+R) and either boot to recovery or use an external disk to run Disk Repair and Permissions repair.

Generally this worked and the problems were alleviated. Are these new computers? If not, is it possible that they could have a disk failure?

[joemamasmac]

These are brand spanking new computers. We get them in, netboot, then use casper imaging. I have not played around with one of them yet, but I was thinking about running disk repair/fix permissions, then seeing if I could set the startup disk again. I will also try zapping the PRAM as well and report back.

Joe

[strider_knh]

If an EFI password is set I have run into an issue that it doesn't boot to the HDD after imaging. If I hold down option key I can choose the correct HDD and boot to it successfully and everything works fine after that.

[htse]

the Startup Disk probably needs to be re-set after imaging.

[globaldominatio]

If you have option of adding a workflow, First Partition the HDD and then Do your regular thing :)

[joemamasmac]

We do partition the hard drive first. There is no EFI password set on these computers, and I verified that the startup disk is set properly. I will continue looking at this.

Joe

[davidacland]

We've just had this at one of our sites. The bigger issue was a lot of machines hanging at 50% during boot (looking like a common problem), but in some cases, after multiple restarts, the Macs start showing a flashing ? on boot.

As @htse mentioned, set the startup disk again and the Mac boots up (well in our case, crashes half way but thats another story).

Not sure on the cause although we're starting to go off Yosemite!

We have recovery partitions so thats ruled out in our case.

[joemamasmac]

I used to have a script that looked for and deleted the recovery partition when imaging. I took that script out when I started imaging Yosemite as it would fail every time. Does someone have something in their workflow where they are formatting the hard drive and creating just the one partition? If so, would you mind sharing?

[joemamasmac]

The issues are continuing. I am wondering if this isn't related to the Symantec Endpoint Protection client. We upgraded to SEPM 12.1 RU5 a while back, but never deployed the clients. With the move to Yosemite, we are attempting to install SEP 12.1.5, and at least in 3 instances, after having Casper push 12.1.5 and rebooting, it comes back with the folder and flashing question mark. Anyone else running SEP at all?

Joe

[glutz]

How did you create the image? is this from a clean install and capture or using AutoDMG?

[Serge]

I've been testing and deploying the 12.1 ru5 client for about a month now with Yosemite, it's on about 70 boxes at the moment either Mavericks or Yosemite, while I wait for the Windows side to complete their testing so I can do a full push to existing users, and I haven't seen this issue yet. How are you deploying SEP? I have the SEPM deployment package running as the last app to be installed on the enrollmentComplete trigger, with an auto restart after 5 minutes.

[joemamasmac]

Serge, I am told by Symantec that there is a known incompatibility between Casper and Sep 12.1.5. I was advised by Symantec not to use casper to deploy SEP. In a good portion of the cases where the OS was being corrupted, SEP was the last thing to be installed prior to the flashing folder/question mark. In the logs that I was able to find on the machine, there are disk space and kext errors after the reboot. So far a manual installation of SEP on a couple of machines have yielded no errors.

@glutz, the image was created off of an iMac following the JAMF recommendations for a minimal OS installation. I then use Composer to grab the image and import it into the Casper Admin.

Joe

[gachowski]

Joe,

Can you provide some more info on the SEP and Casper issue? Can you share a SEP case/tix number?

We have not seen the folder/question mark with X.10 and SEP 12.1.5.

SEP is not the last thing installed in our build. SEP gets installed in the "first run/adoble user" install, I think it's the 3rd of 5 installs and one script that run then.

C

PS we did see the older/question mark with our X.9 build but it was less then 10% of the time so I never investigated.

[joemamasmac]

@gachowski, my case number with Symantec is "07861282" . Symantec really wasn't much help regarding the issue and simply told me that it was not supported at this point. They then pointed me to their network installer which I have not been able to get working. I can tell you that after users upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite, as well as us pushing a clean install of Yosemite from Casper Imaging, users could reboot multiple times, but once SEP 12.1.5 was installed, some would users would get the flashing question mark. A review of the Jamf and System logs showed Kext and Storage sizing errors that the disk was out of storage, even though it clearly was not.

I was planning to rebuild the SEP 12.1.5 package today, cache it on machines and call it via a script to see if that made a difference. I will let you know what I find.

Joe

[TreeMan]

running into the same issue.

using target mode imaging. v9.72 and 10.10.3 base image created with autodmg. EFI password has been previously set.

macbook airs that previously had 10.9.x image perfectly! no problems.

the issue Im running into is any macbooks that have previously updated to 10.10.x will not re-image without the question mark showing up after restart.

it appears that any macbook in target disk mode with the black background will not re-image.

[CasperSally]

Anyone find an answer to this?

I was fine imaging configs with recovery partitions with 9.65, but after upgrading to 9.81 this broke and now any config I choose with more than one partition boots to folder with question mark.

If I hold down option and enter firmware password, I can boot to Macintosh HD, but on next boot it goes back to question mark at startup.

This isn't livable. ugh.