NetInstall 10.4 image from 10.3.9

That sounds like a bad booter file. Have you tried making the image again? I know for me to make an image of a drive with about 7GB worth of installed files, I needed a firewire drive with about 60 GB available before it would successfully make the image. The link above didn't work but yes, you are correct, you must make the image on a 10.4 computer. Took me way too long to get that figured out...

-John

I run into the exact same issue. However, I'm creating the image on a firewire drive connected to a 10.4.2 Server, and my image is of a 10.4.2 machine. But I get the same black rectangle in the screen after the spinning globe and it hangs/crashes there as well. My server and image source are both completely up-to-date. I've had NetBoot and NetInstall working fine before. I just can't get a machine to complete booting from either a NetBoot or NetInstall.

Have you all verified the failing machines have the latest firmware?
Do they have at least 512MB of RAM? (I've had this problem, even though you should be OK with 256. Easy to check, just pop an extra stick in and see if it works.)

And you could try resetting your open firmware on those machines:

Cmd-Opt-O-F on boot. At the prompt type:
reset-nvram
reset-all

I'm leaning towards RAM or possibly the booter file mentioned earlier.

-D

And I thought I was alone in this...

I have exactly the same symptoms. In a nutshell, this is what I do:

- Create an image on my client Mac running 10.4.2. Everything up-to-date. It is 4.15GB in size.
- Copy the image to my Mac OS X Server 10.3.9. Also up-to-date.
- The server is a PowerMac G4, 1.25GHz, 1,25GB RAM.
- I use Network Image Utility to create a NetInstall image: named Tiger, ID 150, served via NFS. In the Contents tab, I choose the Tiger image created in step 1. In Installation Options I only check Enable Automated Installation, with the following options: User selects, Erase the target volume, Require client user to respond, Restart the client computer.

This is the log I have from NetInstall. There are some errors:

2005-09-22 16:01:59 +0200 Initiating user authentication
2005-09-22 16:02:03 +0200 Image creation in progress
2005-09-22 16:02:04 +0200 Initializing...2005-09-22 16:02:04 +0200
2005-09-22 16:02:05 +0200 Creating...2005-09-22 16:03:13 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:13 +0200 Formatting...2005-09-22 16:03:14 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:14 +0200 Finishing...2005-09-22 16:03:14 +0200
created: 2005-09-22 16:03:14 +0200 /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/Tiger_GOOD.dmg2 005-09-22 16:03:14 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:15 +0200 Initializing...2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200 Verifying...2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200 Checksumming Driver Descriptor Map (DDM : 0)...2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200 Driver Descriptor Map (DDM : 0): verified CRC32 $66844EDA2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200 Checksumming Apple (Apple partitionmap : 1)...2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200 Apple (Apple partitionmap : 1): verified CRC32 $44284AD02005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200
2005-09-22 16:03:16 +0200 Checksumming disk image (Apple_HFS : 2)...2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 disk image (Apple_HFS : 2): verified CRC32 $4FE8E0DA2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 Checksumming (Apple_Free : 3)...2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 (Apple_Free : 3): verified CRC32 $000000002005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 Verification completed...2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 verified CRC32 $DC5B9CD92005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 Attaching...2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 Finishing...2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200 Finishing...2005-09-22 16:14:27 +0200
/dev/disk4 Apple partitionscheme
/dev/disk4s1 Apple partitionmap
/dev/disk4s2 Apple_HFS /private/tmp/mnt
2005-09-22 16:14:29 +0200 Validating target...2005-09-22 16:14:29 +0200 done
Validating source...2005-09-22 16:14:29 +0200 done
Validating sizes...2005-09-22 16:14:29 +0200 There is not enough space in volume "/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt" to do the restore
2005-09-22 16:14:29 +0200
couldn't validate sizes - Operation not permitted.
2005-09-22 16:14:29 +0200 mkdir: 2005-09-22 16:14:29 +0200 /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/private/var /db2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 : No such file or directory
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 chmod: 2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/private/var /db/emptyScriptFolder: No such file or directory2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 chmod: 2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/private/etc : No such file or directory2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 No mount point for /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWi

Sorry... the text was chopped out. Here's the continuation of the above post:

[...]
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 No mount point for /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/System/Libr ary/CoreServices
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 Can't determine mount point of '/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/System/Lib rary/CoreServices' and ''
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 can't add repository (not a directory).
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 couldn't find any valid bundles to archive
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 cp: 2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/usr/standal one/ppc/bootx.bootinfo: No such file or directory2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 cp: 2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200 /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/mach_kernel : No such file or directory2005-09-22 16:14:30 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:32 +0200 chown: 2005-09-22 16:14:32 +0200 /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/0922160138InstallImageWithID175.nbi/mnt/private/etc : No such file or directory2005-09-22 16:14:32 +0200
2005-09-22 16:14:32 +0200 "disk3" unmounted.
"disk3" ejected.
2005-09-22 16:15:02 +0200 hdiutil: 2005-09-22 16:15:02 +0200 unmount: Timeout for DiskArbitration expired. Aborting...2005-09-22 16:15:02 +0200
2005-09-22 16:15:02 +0200 "disk4" unmounted.
"disk4" ejected.
2005-09-22 16:15:03 +0200 Image creation complete
2005-09-22 16:15:03 +0200 Log saved to Library/Logs/NetworkImageUtility.log in the users home folder
2005-09-22 16:15:03 +0200 Click New image type button in the toolbar to create another image
2005-09-22 16:15:03 +0200 Unmounting image...
2005-09-22 16:15:03 +0200 Image creation complete

Questions I have:

- Are these errors fatal?
- Is it OK if the nbi directory created by NIU resides in the NetBootSP0 folder?
- Where is the Tiger image I created in step 1 supposed to be installed?

I find the documentation about NetInstall EXTREMELY poor. If I knew how to make this work, I'd post it online. It's amazing that this "simple" operation is so difficult to implement.

By the way. I tried with NetRestore Helper and worked at the first try. However, I'd like to use Apple's installer, not NetRestore. If anyone can point me to the right direction I will be eternally grateful.

Thanks!

The one step that seems to make a difference for me is to create the master image by booting the machine being cloned in target mode and directly attaching it to the server. Don't know if this will help you, but it's worked for me.

Hi Jeff,

I booted from the FireWire drive, then made the master image (saving it to the internal drive, acting as a slave drive).

There is something that escapes me... could you please post how/where do you create the NIU NetInstall image? Is it placed just like another NetBoot image? (that is, simply placing it inside the NetBootSP0 directory)

Is there anything I need to do? I would appreciate the series of steps you normally take, this way I can make sure I'm doing the right thing.

Thanks so much,

-- Tito

I just created an 10.3.9 build of a machine on a firewire drive ... then used NetRestore Helper on a 10.4.2. machine (created a block-copy) image ... worked!

So then I copied the .dmg onto the 10.3.9 NetInstall server, and tried to use Network Image Utility to create the NetInstall image (.nbi folder) ... I tried to pick the disk image as the image source under the Contents tab ... but when I clieck Create, i get the following error box:

Can't create image from selected source.
- A bill of materials (BOM) file required to create this image is missing from the source.

what gives?