Image creation failure

[tobiasclarity]

Does anyone know or is anyone aware of common issues that would prevent a netrestore image from being created, i am dealing with a very hefty image from the 'built' mac which has things like adobe suite and logic pro on it so over 50gb in size as an image. Sadly this also means it takes a long time to troubleshoot. I left it running last night and came into work the next day and it said image creation failure, as it was over night i didnt really know how long it took so i thought i would restart the image creation at 9am, by 5pm i was installing logmein onto my machine so i could come home and have a life but still be able to monitor it. Naturally i am expecting this to fail again (obviously hoping it wont) but if it does then are there any obvious things i need to check/verify. I need to be sure i get this right to save alot of time in the long run but having never created an image before. I am using the standard system image utility to create this.

 

Does anyone also know where log files are stored so i can look into it a little more as to the failure should it fail again.

 

Many thanks for any help on this

[tobiasclarity]

arghhhhhhh 12 hours later it has just failed!!!!

[tobiasclarity]

Ok here is the log: If anyone can help i would really appreciate it!

 

Create NetRestore Image

 

Initiating NetRestore from installed volume.

 

diskimages-helper: DI_kextDriveDisconnect returned 268435459 ((ipc/send) invalid destination port).

hdiutil: create failed - Operation timed out

Execution of 'makeNetRestoreFromItem.sh' failed. Cleaning up.

rm: /Users/Administrator/Desktop/MUSICBUILD.nbi/System.dmg: No such file or directory

Execution of 'asrFromVolume.sh' failed. Cleaning up.

Script is done.

 

Bridge exited with status 256

 

Failed to create image from restore source.

 

An unknown error has occurred.

 

An unknown error has occurred.

 

Image creation process finished...

 

Stopping image creation.

 

Image creation failed.

[eddyc]

Is there enough storage on the remote server to store the image?

[tobiasclarity]

Is there enough storage on the remote server to store the image?

 

At the current stage i am running this to a Mac Mini server and it has 500gb storage, all it is running is mac server so it should have more than enough space

[eddyc]

In that case it should be fine, this caught us out before and we spent days looking for an issue which wasn't really an issue.

 

One other thing we have done before to solve an image which would stop mid capture was to run disk utility and verify the drive \ files.

[tobiasclarity]

In that case it should be fine, this caught us out before and we spent days looking for an issue which wasn't really an issue.

 

One other thing we have done before to solve an image which would stop mid capture was to run disk utility and verify the drive \ files.

 

But in 'theory' i have done everything i need to do right?

 

Sorry do you mind just checking over what i am doing, i am creating a netrestore image as i want to use a base system that i have preinstalled apps and customization on and want that to be duplicated over to other clients on the network?

 

There seems to be loads of info on Netboot over the web but that from what i gather is not what i want as it is almost like thin clients. is this right? and yet barely any info on what i want to do in just creating a then duplicating that image to the clients to the local drive

 

thank you for your time on this i do appreciate it!

[eddyc]

In theory yes you have done everything correct - built an image with your required applications, updated it and now you are trying to capture it to restore.

 

We stopped using Net Restore a couple of years ago and moved over to Deploystudio - once you get the hang of that, it is really good for imaging and can support cloning Windows for Bootcamp too.

[tobiasclarity]

In theory yes you have done everything correct - built an image with your required applications, updated it and now you are trying to capture it to restore.

 

We stopped using Net Restore a couple of years ago and moved over to Deploystudio - once you get the hang of that, it is really good for imaging and can support cloning Windows for Bootcamp too.

 

Out of interest as you have got me thinking now, when using the netrestore and you were saying about space when it is creating the image is it creating the whole HDD as an image including unused space? as in is it creating a 320gb image or just what is actually on the drive which totals around 77gb with apps etc? as if it is the full HDD that may explain it grounding and failing

[eddyc]

Out of interest as you have got me thinking now, when using the netrestore and you were saying about space when it is creating the image is it creating the whole HDD as an image including unused space? as in is it creating a 320gb image or just what is actually on the drive which totals around 77gb with apps etc? as if it is the full HDD that may explain it grounding and failing

 

It should only be capturing the data on the drive (77gb)

[tobiasclarity]

It should only be capturing the data on the drive (77gb)

 

Just wanted to check as i am fully from a Windows background and didnt know if the Mac's where a little quirky in that sense really odd it failing, so frustrating as well!

[eddyc]

Just wanted to check as i am fully from a Windows background and didnt know if the Mac's where a little quirky in that sense really odd it failing, so frustrating as well!

 

I know the feeling... My last school was completely Windows (The didn't actually use OSX on any of the Macs!) and I've managed to steer clear of the macs here up until Christmas when my technician left, now I'm in at the deep end!

[tobiasclarity]

It should only be capturing the data on the drive (77gb)

 

Im going to try in the morning hooking the host mac up the mac Xserve and do it directly to there instead of my mac mini server and see what happens

[tobiasclarity]

I know the feeling... My last school was completely Windows (The didn't actually use OSX on any of the Macs!) and I've managed to steer clear of the macs here up until Christmas when my technician left, now I'm in at the deep end!

 

Sounds similar to me, is deploystudio worth taking a look at? is it alot to learn in less than a week? i only have till easter ends which is for us to have this all done completed and tested will full roll out

[eddyc]

Sounds similar to me, is deploystudio worth taking a look at? is it alot to learn in less than a week? i only have till easter ends which is for us to have this all done completed and tested will full roll out

 

Deploy studio is pretty easy to learn - if you install it on your mac server (Free download) and then make a netboot set (instructions in their user guide) you can then network boot the machine by holding down N and run a task to capture that image.

[tobiasclarity]

Deploy studio is pretty easy to learn - if you install it on your mac server (Free download) and then make a netboot set (instructions in their user guide) you can then network boot the machine by holding down N and run a task to capture that image.

 

Well amazingly i managed to get the mammoth image to create at 67gb in total it finally completed building after the third attempt it built in a massive 15 and a half hours!!!!!!!

[eddyc]

Well amazingly i managed to get the mammoth image to create at 67gb in total it finally completed building after the third attempt it built in a massive 15 and a half hours!!!!!!!

 

Glad to hear that you finally got there!

[mash3d3d]

Hi Tobiasclarity. How did you mange to get it working in the end? Did you change anything or just get lucky on the 3rd attempt? I too have an old XServe (which always used to work creating images) Should I just try to create the image using that?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

John

[tobiasclarity]

Hi Tobiasclarity. How did you mange to get it working in the end? Did you change anything or just get lucky on the 3rd attempt? I too have an old XServe (which always used to work creating images) Should I just try to create the image using that?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

John

 

Hi John,

 

Do you know what in the end i ditched the whole process and manually imaged the last 14 machines. I could create the image fine using XServe but then when i had deployed it was replicating the serial number of the host machine across the clients i was deploying to which is a common problem (reading through the net) and meant when joining them to the profile manager it just fell over. i just didnt have the time to spend fixing it as we only have a few clients.