imac won't look at deploystudio network boot

[SC92]

Hi,

 

Just re-imaging one of our imacs after a clean format but the mac wont find/look at the network boot option. It can see it but upon trying to boot into network boot the flashing globe sometimes appears and then I get the rotating apple loading icon. It just restarts and restarts and restarts. Just a quick thought - would the version of snow leopard have anything to do with it? Server is 10.6.8 but clean installing snow leopard is 10.6.2, although can't see it has much relevance as surely that's the point of re-imaging?!?! Any tips/things to try would be hugely appreciated.

 

Sam

[Greenbeast]

you've created a netboot image on that machine and uploaded it to the server netboot folder i assume?

[SC92]

Thanks for the reply!

No, i'm trying to pull the image down from deploystudio repository but it just wont find/connect to it.

[Greenbeast]

The netboot image is what allow the machine to boot from the network.

 

You need to install deploystudio on a client first and create a netboot image (don't need to start netboot service when it asks), then you need to copy that up to the server (there'll be a netboot folder)

To be honest you're best off reading the documentation or finding and online guide

[HodgeHi]

A lot of people tend to skip the deploy studio admin guide and I'm not quite sure why. It is quite straight forward, clear and gives you all the info you need. I tried creating a guide myself but couldn't get anything better than what w already there.

 

The quick start guide is also good and short as well if time is limited.

 

One other thing as well. Not sure if this has been fixed. But I have had issues where if a previous deployment is cancelled the hard way after net booting the cancellation can sometimes cause the NetBoot service or the NFS service to freeze. It is sometimes worth restarting the NetBoot service and NFS service if you are having net booting issues.

 

Also restarting the deploy studio service (found in system preferences) is worth doing to.

[SC92]

A lot of people tend to skip the deploy studio admin guide and I'm not quite sure why. It is quite straight forward, clear and gives you all the info you need. I tried creating a guide myself but couldn't get anything better than what w already there.

 

The quick start guide is also good and short as well if time is limited.

 

One other thing as well. Not sure if this has been fixed. But I have had issues where if a previous deployment is cancelled the hard way after net booting the cancellation can sometimes cause the NetBoot service or the NFS service to freeze. It is sometimes worth restarting the NetBoot service and NFS service if you are having net booting issues.

 

Also restarting the deploy studio service (found in system preferences) is worth doing to.

 

How would I go about restarting the NFS/Netboot Services? May as well ask about the deploystudio service while I broach that subject!

[HodgeHi]

To restart the netboot service you need to use server admin. If you don't know what server admin is then I would suggest further reading of apples documentation.

 

To restart the deploystudio service you need to go to the server that deploy studio is installed on and then go to system preferences. There should be a deploystudio option. Just turn it off and then back on again.

 

The NFS Service may not gave an option to restart. It may be part of the netboot service. I can't recall if apple changed the way the NFS service worked. I have a vague recollection of not seeing a stop or restart option.

 

Alternatively just reboot the entire server.

[SC92]

Unfortunately i've tried restarting both of those options you suggested to no avail. I hate to say that I'm completely stumped at this moment in time. I have just located the image that I created some time ago which we mainly use as our master. Is there any way of installing that onto a mac without using Deploystudio?! (Just a workaround at the moment, urgently need to reimage a few machines).

[SC92]

Ok so now I can get into the network boot option and successfully get to the authentication screen, which I can also get through. Surprise surprise though, when I go to the build option of DPStudio I get an error:

 

"An error occured while mounting the repository share point. Please contact the Deploystudio server admnistrator to check the servers repository configuration."

[HodgeHi]

You need to make sure that the .nbi file has the correct settings in it for the server, share and user authentication. The best way of doing this is to perhaps create a new one. If you are going to do this then you may as well update deploy studio to the latest version as if you do this but don't update the .nbi's as well then you will run into trouble during the boot process. This might be what you are seeing if you have already updated the server version and not updated the .nbi

 

This is perhaps the biggest pain when using deploy studio but its easily overcome by creating an updated .nbi as i mentioned just.

 

Be aware, I'm going through all of this from memory as its been a while since I have had to go through the process myself.

[SC92]

I may aswell just start again then - Assuming it's possible to drag my old image out from the repository and once i've reinstalled the new version etc just drag it back in the images folder? I just don't want to add to my already heavy workload by having to create an image again that i've already created!

[HodgeHi]

No, you won't need to re-create the image. And you should be able to update deploy studio without losing any of the images already present. The .nbi file is what is used to reboot the client.

 

All deploy studio does is leverages the net boot process of the Apple server to boot the client from the network. You create a .nbi file using deploy studio because it loads its own frameworks (hence the reason the file is around 1.4GB in size)

 

Once the client is net booted it then passes all of the information stored in the net boot file (.nbi) to the imaging process. Also some of the settings may be in the workflow too. I can't remember.

 

Most importantly though, the creation of the .nbi file takes around 10 minutes. It will still be able to use the image of the client you have even if it was 10 years old.