[MacTUG] A deploystudio question

Fri Dec 18 15:17:02 EST 2009

Hi Steve, sorry if I was not clear in the last posting, my brain was confused.

I did not mean ‘rebuild’ but ‘restoring of the master image(s)’ -- we just call this time ‘lab rebuild’ -- it sounds nice and manly, haha.

But yes, I am setting the deploystudio workflows up as you described and they are generally working great, and likely the problems I am having on my first use of it are not greater than those that may have happened during a typical Netrestore session (sorry Mike Bombich!!)

Really, I was not noticing any significant problems until I tried to get deploystudio to help rename the machines. I attached the “Rebuild system with computers database content” task with the “rename computer” and “automatic” buttons clicked on. At any rate when I ran the workflow with this task attached I would get the message that I referred to -- "Updating Boot Cache. Computer will restart once complete.” I remember this message from the occasional system update in the past and remembered that after a minute or so the computer would restart. At any rate, for 90+% of the machines, after a minute or so this message would eventually go away and the restart would occur. For the few troublemakers, it would hang.

Just to see what is going on, I am restoring the image to the lab machines again, without the renaming happening automatically (I will just fly through the lab using ARD to manually rename things). By and large my problem is going away. I still have a few machines that hang on their restart after being restored. Now if I power these guys down and then restart them, they are fine. But out of principle/spite/mistrust I restore onto these machines again and they seem to behave.

But these hangs on restart, right after I have deployed my restore bother me a bit. My solution of blowing the machines away may be a little heavy handed but I have a fast network and I think it is working. I have restarted all my machines repeatedly and they are now behaving, but that first hang after using deploystudio bugs me. (I do remember this occasionally happening with netrestore, I guess I just got used to it, haha)

PS: Please keep me posted about any netrestore roadshow. I would like to attend. I have the basics down but any tips would be good to know and I would like to know about using it to deploy packages and perhaps multicasting (although with only about 60 – 70 macs to look after it may not be worth it).

Thanks...
don

On 09-12-18 1:51 PM, "Steve Hellyer" <phasetwo at apple.com> wrote:

Not enough details to really say. I think this is a terminology thing cause you lost me a bit.

One question, when it rebuilds

When "it" rebuilds.  What is rebuilding?   Should not be any "rebuilding" as part of an image deployment.

So... you netboot your final perfect machine into deploystudio and you create the master this way. One of the workflows in DeployStudio is to create a master image from a client. It will grab the content of your drive and upload to your server, compress it, and then place it in your HFS folder.

This is the master you want to use as part of a new workflow to image.  You shouldn't have to update boot caches.  Makes me think you not creating master properly and this is so important ESPECIALLY if you plan on binding to a directory.

Is this the method you making your master images to put on the server?

Are you adding any package(s) install as an addition step after the client image is laid down on the client? This might cause a rebuild.

Steve

PS... Planning to have a 4 hour hands on seminar late in January in Waterloo/Guelph (Location TBD). Hope to be able provide more hands on tips with this.
Sorry it could not be sooner. :(

On 2009-12-18, at 11:54 AM, Donald Duff-McCracken wrote:

So my first deploystudio lab rebuild is going great! Steve & Ed, as you both said it is a great product.

One question, when it rebuilds and starts the restart process the “updating boot cache” message appears. (I can’t remember the exact syntax but you likely know the one.) However, On about 5-10% of the machines, after it is rebuilt it hangs during the restart.

A forced reboot via the power button seems to fix things. Am I likely looking at problems with this ‘slap on the side of the head’ approach? If it does not automatically restart after the message appears about the boot cache, should I rebuild the troublemaker(s)?

-------------------------------------------------------

Steve Hellyer

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Education Division (Higher Education)

Apple Canada Inc.

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------------------------------------
Donald Duff-McCracken
Technical Services Manager
Mapping, Analysis & Design
Faculty of Environmental Studies
University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 x32151
http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/computing/people/don.html
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