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How can I image a mac remotely over the network with no access to the machine (no keyboard)?

UPDATE: We may be having issues with the reboot process after selecting a network boot disk, see edit below.

We're learning about mac imaging to manage a small pool of mac build machines (8 mac minis). These machines are racked in a room we don't have access to.

We have full administrative rights on these machines, but we have yet to work out an imaging process that meets our needs.

Goals:

  • Distribute build pool environment changes with a standard image
  • Changes include updated iOS certificates, provisioning profiles, XCode versions, other hard-to-automate changes.
  • Can save images to capture exact environments to make older builds repeatable, e.g. shipping a hotfix for a live version, while a newer version is being built.

For image automation we would like to be:

  • Able to capture an image from a template machine, and store it elsewhere, such as another mac, or on the network
  • Able to remotely apply that image to other machines in the pool
  • Able to apply the image WITHOUT LOCAL ACCESS, especially without holding key combinations.

We currently:

  • Are using NetBoot and DeployStudio to do imaging
  • Have dedicated one machine to be the 'image server' full time
  • Have captured machine images without issue
  • Can boot with NetBoot, but have to hold down a key combo to make that work
  • After netbooting seems to image fine

Edit: The local netboot works reliably holding Command-N. Choosing a startup disk and rebooting does not work consistently. We've found it seems to work about one in ten tries or so. In the success case, the machine reboots, shows the apple logo, PXE boots over the network, and image loads and continues through the process. In the failure case, the screen remains black, and the machine reboots after a while. This is baffling, but it may indicate we have a different issue to address.

It feels like we're very close to a solution, but we're unable to get around the holding-down-keys issue, and that's really causing problems with our workflow.

Is there an imaging approach that will work with fully remote machines in this way?

Colin Dabritz
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1 Answers1

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Deploystudio has a task 'periodic netboot' which does what it says on the tin. Add this to your workflow.

If you are having troubles netbooting, make sure you are using netboot images made on that hardware (ie install deploystudio on a client, create a netboot set, copy it to server, remove deploystudio from client). Netboot images are fairly hardware specific. Make it as easy as possible for the clients by only having 1 netboot server if you can. Also, if you have a routed network, add IP helper address of netboot server.

On top of that, you can automate a specific workflow to run for a specific computer each time it runs deploystudio netboot. We've used this in the past and it seems to work OK.

Jim ReesPotter
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