Netboot in 10.13
hi,
After moving to a larger place, I find myself wanting a more robust way of using the different computers I have in my house.
While every one has their own specific function, and native OS configuration, I'd like it very much if I'd be able to log in to an office type environment easily on all of these.
Netboot seems like a good solution. I'd be able to configure a guest account or a simple mail+browsing account with my bookmarks, without having to lug around a local account on every computer. it'd also be useful for diagnosing systems without having to use a USB recovery drive.
But I cannot get this to work with 10.13.
- I run a Mac mini 2011 2.0 Ghz i7 server. It has High Sierra and server 5.4
- I have a 2011 MacBook Pro (both ethernet and wi-fi are connected)
- I have a 2015 MacBook Air
- I also have a PC, which, with a little effort, could run a netboot image of MacOS or Linux, or at least run a VM off of one.
On the Mac mini:
- no bootdp, bsdp or netboot log entries (as suggested in apple support doc HT203437)
- Server with netInstall enabled, with an image configured, with Server gives a green light. It is set as standard and was created using system image utility, from a properly functioning SSD (freshly installed and configured with 10.13). It should boot on any Mac.
On my MacBook Pro I did:
- reboot in recovery mode (cmd+r)
- in terminal, typed csrutil netboot add 10.0.0.148 (the IP of my Mac mini server)
- rebooted, type csrutil netboot list. it returns the IP address previously added
- Rebooted, holding N. It showed the globe, but nothing happened. Again, no bootdp, bsdp or netboot log entries in either server or clients system log (as suggested in apple support doc HT203437)
It's really painful to see Apple making things "more secure", but in that process also breaking a lot of fun and useful functionality that made the Mac such an attractive platform. As I'm typing this even the word Mac is being autocorrected to "make".... Sigh.
If anyone can recommend a way to achieve this functionality with open source tools, or point my attention to a missed step, it'd make me a happy camper. So far what I've found by googling the issue hasn't been encouraging