Can't build 10.7.4 netboot image with 10.8 system image utility?

Question

Can't build 10.7.4 netboot image with 10.8 system image utility?

Just installed 10.8 and 10.8 server on my MBP. Now want create a 10.7.x netboot image using System Image Utility.

-- on a different laptop, built a vanilla 10.7 install, then ran 10.7 combined updater to bring install up to 10.7.4

-- restart this laptop in Target Disk Mode and attach to 10.8 laptop - mounts HD on 10.8 desktop as expected

-- fire up 10.8 System Image Utility on 10.8 laptop

SIU does not see the mounted vanilla 10.7.4 hard drive as a valid source volume. Cannot drag volume into SIU window.

Can I only build a 10.8 netboot image with 10.8 SIU?

Thanks in advance for you assistance!

Jeff Elliott

Tech Support Staff

Hempfield School District

OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 31, 2012 5:52 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 1, 2012 11:35 AM in response to hempfieldtech

OK, I've forged ahead and successfully built a Mountain Lion (10.8) netboot image with the Mountain Lion SIU, which worked as expected, of course! A couple of caveats ...

We have multiple netboot servers installed in the various buildings in our school district. The hosting netboot server does NOT have to be running Mountain Lion/Server in order to host the Mountain Lion netboot image. HOWEVER, it MUST be a machine that is CAPABLE of running Mountain Lion, otherwise, client machines cannot netboot against the Mountain Lion netboot image.

I guess this makes sense, but be aware, Mountain Lion deprecates a lot of somewhat dated machines, including some otherwise nicely-spec'd Xserves. I'm talking quad-core Xeon Xserves that aren't all that old (2008). Interestingly, one COULD use a mid-2007 iMac as a Mountain Lion server, according to the filter list contained in the Automator actions within SIU. Strange, but true ....

Now, if I'm totally wrong about this, I'd be happy to be proven otherwise, but in live testing, this is what I've found so far.

Jeff Elliott

Tech Support Staff

Hempfield School District

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Answer 2

Aug 2, 2012 12:06 PM in response to hempfieldtech

Jeff,

What utility did you use on 10.8 to image the hard drive? I can not find a 10.8 system image utilty online at all and there was not one installed when i set up my ML server. I tried the 10.7.4 system image utility but it does not run on a 10.8 machine.

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide.

Corey

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Answer 3

Aug 2, 2012 12:58 PM in response to Corey Smith3

Actually i found the 10.8 utility. I did not know it was listed under the tools menu in the server app.

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Answer 4

Aug 9, 2012 9:24 AM in response to Corey Smith3

It's located in /System/Library/CoreServices/ if you wish to launch it directly (i.e. without Server installed).

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Answer 5

Aug 9, 2012 10:42 AM in response to hempfieldtech

You should be able to serve 10.8 images from non-10.8 compatible systems. I've successfully hosted, and booted into a 10.8 NetBoot volume hosted on a MacPro that is incapable of running 10.8.

You may be running into the fact that the default protocol for images built on 10.8 is HTTP, not NFS, and your 10.7 server isn't properly hosting HTTP images (that's what I saw in my test).

Booting the client in verbose mode will tell you many helpful things. 🙂

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Answer 6

Aug 17, 2012 12:53 PM in response to Brian Nesse

What you describe has been the case in the past - older servers have been able to host newer netboot images without issue. I tried changing the (older) host server protocol to NFS for the 10.8 netboot image, but still no success. I went back to the 10.8 system image utility to see if there was a setting in the image creation workflow where I could tell it which protocol (HTTP or NFS) to use - did not see anything. I checked the generated NBImageInfo.plist for my 10.8 netboot image, and indeed, HTTP is the set as the ImageType.

Any further insight you can provide would be appreciated!

Jeff Elliott

Tech Support Staff

Hempfield School District

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Answer 7

Aug 20, 2012 8:32 AM in response to hempfieldtech

Prior to 10.8 SIU created images which defaulted to the NFS protocol. Apple has since eliminated GUI support for setting up NFS. As HTTP was declared to be the default protocol, SIU was changed to create images which default to HTTP.

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Answer 8

Aug 22, 2012 3:02 PM in response to hempfieldtech

I was able to host the 10.8 image with no problem on my 10.6.8 machine. I just used the default settings and the images worked correct. I just have a few issues of trying to find a few plist files to make some changes that i forgot to do in my 1st image. ( already imaged some 400 compuers ) ....

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