10.6.8 Netboot - "Still waiting for root device"

Hi all,

I am having trouble with one particular 10.6.8 Netboot image that is hosted on a Mac Pro running 10.5.8 Server. (The main 10.5.8 Server is currently hosting about 15 other Netboot and Netrestore images that work with no problem.) I built the image on a 10.6.8 Server using System Image Utility from a fully updated 10.6.8 restore image on an external hard drive. The external drive was started up on MacBook, MacBook Pro, and iMac systems ranging from Late '06 to Early '11 revisions. Software update was run on every startup, but came back fully up-to-date every time and never encountered problems starting up each from the external drive.

I then ran Disk Utility permissions repair on the external drive from the 10.6.8 Server Mac Pro and built the Netboot image in System Image Utility. Although I am fairly new to this process, I have already successfully built several 10.6.8, 10.7.5, 10.8.5, and 10.9 Netrestore images as well as one 10.9 diagnostic Netboot that all work perfectly. I followed the same process when creating the 10.6.8 Netboot image.

The image I created, called 10.6.8 Diags 3.0, shows up in the Netboot list, but when I attempt to boot it shows the Apple logo for a bit before showing the "circle slash" symbol. Verbose mode shows that it hangs when starting and repeats "Still waiting for root device" over and over again and never does anything.

I have rebuilt the 10.6.8 Diags 3.0 Netboot image several times to rule out the possibility of corruption durring image creation. I have also tried to create the image from a Firewire attached external drive as well as building the data on the external drive into a .dmg on the 10.6.8 Server and then creating the image from that. All methods of creating the image yeild the same "Still waiting for root device" error when attempting to start up on any system supporting the 10.6.8 kernel.

Netboot settings in Server Admin are the same as other Netboot images that are functioning: enabled, diskless, Intel (grayed out), and NFS. I have verified that all enabled image index numbers are unique and even tried several different index numbers on the problem Neboot image.

Again, all other Netrestore images I created on the same 10.6.8 Server work just fine when added to the Netboot directory on the 10.5.8 Main Server, but the Netboot image of 10.6.8 Diags 3.0 does not. I'm not sure what else to try at this point, any ideas?