DeployStudio Image Creation Failure

[callbe1]

Hi Everyone,

 

We're currently looking at building a new Yosemite mac image for deployment using DeployStudio. It appears we're hitting a bit of a wall which we can't get through. Everytime we try and capture a new disk image it happily works through until the 'Uploading Disk Image File' and we then get a 'workflow aborted' message come up and it asks to check the log for more details. When I look at the log it just says 'Imaging Failure'. It usually aborts itself around 1min 40s into the overall capture.

 

We've upgraded both mac server to Yosemite as well as getting OS X server updated. We've also downloaded the latest version of DeployStudio from their website. Since we've updated it all I've created a new netboot and enabled the netinstall through OS X server. Multiple reboots of machine and server haven't knocked anything into life. We're completely stuck on this one, there isn't really anything to go off with that error message.

 

If any Mac experts here have any tips that would be absolutely fantastic! (forgot to say I'm a bit of a newb to all this Mac stuff, but I'm pretty sure I've tried all I can think of!)

 

Thanks,

Ben

Edited May 29, 2015 by callbe1

[3s-gtech]

Where on the server are you capturing the disk image to? Is there plenty of space? I have a separate USB disk just for the images, as they can fill up the storage pretty quickly.

[callbe1]

Capturing it to the DeployStudio Masters folder. Plenty of room on the mac itself so I don't think that will be a problem.

 

I have noticed the failed images are saving in the tmp folder.

[AntonioRocco]

Some things to be aware of when using DeployStudio.

 

All images uploaded over the network are stored in the Deploy Studio's tmp folder. If it's successful DS Runtime will move it to the Masters folder after a short while. How long? Depends on the size of the image.

 

There must be enough free space on the hard drive you're capturing the image from otherwise it will fail. For example if the internal hard drive is 256GB in size and the amount of data being captured is 128GB in size image creation will fail. Looks like you've accounted for this but double-check just in case. Control-clicking on the hard drive icon and selecting 'Get Info' should give you the information you need.

 

When installing DeployStudio on the client mac you're going to use to first: create the much smaller network bootable OS from and second: capture the image from, make sure you don't start the service as well as making sure you uninstall DeployStudio prior to capturing the image.

 

Permissions. If the account you've created to administer DeployStudio Admin with does not have read/write access to the depository, image creation will fail.

 

If you're using a proxy (most schools do) disable the setting on the server, assuming you've put those settings in.

 

Hopefully this will help?

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[Carter]

Rule of thumb is to have triple the space on your image computer from what is used up. I've had issues with Images completing because the image computer has too small of a HD. I have images that reach 100-120GB and because they have a 256GB SSD drive images won't complete. In this case I plug in an external thunderbolt HD. From here is has space to create and compress the image then upload.

 

If your deployment image is going up to the server to be compressed rather than locally on the computer you need to make sure the same rules apply. If imaging up you want to have double the space available on the server compared to the actual image size.

 

As an example, if you have a 128GB SSD and your image is roughly 40-50GB's then you may hit the wall and there would not be enough room to create the image then compress it. Try plugging in an external thunderbolt HD or use another computer in target mode connected to your image computer as DeployStudio will grab the largest HD with the most free space to create the image on.

Edited May 30, 2015 by Carter

[callbe1]

Thanks everyone.

 

The image we're trying to take is around 17GB (according to the apple storage guide) add the system information I'd hazard a guess its around the 25/30GB mark in total. The mac-server we're sending the image to has over 950GB free on it so I really don't see storage being an issue based on those numbers. The permissions are set on the tmp folder to everyone has read/write so again that should be okay? There are also no proxies enabled on the mac-server.

 

We really are at a loss!!

Edited June 1, 2015 by callbe1