The NetBoot service allows administrators of Apple computers to leverage images hosted on a server to boot computers to a central location and put a new image on them, upgrade them and perform automations based on upgrades and images. Since the very first versions of OS X, the service has been called NetBoot and so the name remains at the command line, but is listed as NetInstall in the Server app. In the Server app, Apple provides a number of options surrounding the NetInstall service, based on Automator-style which we’ll explore further in this article. The first step to configuring the NetInstall service is to decide what you want the service…
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Setup NetBoot On OS X Server 5 for El Capitan and Yosemite
The NetBoot service allows administrators of OS X computers to leverage images hosted on a server to boot computers to a central location and put a new image on them, upgrade them and perform automations based on upgrades and images. Since the very first versions of OS X, the service has been called NetBoot. In the Server app, Apple provides a number of options surrounding the NetInstall service, based on Automator-style actions, now calling the service NetInstall. The first step to configuring the NetInstall service is to decide what you want the service to do. There are three options available in System Image Utility (available under the Tools menu of…
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Edit NetBoot Sets Without Creating New Images
Mac admins spend a lot of time building images. In System Image Utility this can mean baking an image that just looks for a path of a NetRestore source and restores an operating system. Constantly making these is a pretty duplicative task. The goal of this article is to take a generic NetRestore NetBoot image and augment it in such a way that you don’t need to create new NetBoot images unless there’s a new build train. Instead, all you need to do is edit a file that changes the path (uri) of your image so that it can be restored. Using this, you can just stop the NetInstall service in…
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Setup NetInstall On OS X Yosemite Running the Server app
The NetBoot service allows administrators of OS X computers to leverage images hosted on a server to boot computers to a central location and put a new image on them, upgrade them and perform automations based on upgrades and images. Since the very first versions of OS X, the service has been called NetBoot. In the Server app, Apple provides a number of options surrounding the NetInstall service, based on Automator-style actions, now calling the service NetInstall. The first step to configuring the NetInstall service is to decide what you want the service to do. There are three options available in System Image Utility (available under the Tools menu of…
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Use NetInstall In Mavericks Server for System Imaging
The NetBoot service allows administrators of OS X computers to leverage images hosted on a server to boot computers to a central location and put a new image on them, upgrade them and perform automations based on upgrades and images. Since the very first versions of OS X, the service has been called NetBoot. In the Server app, Apple provides a number of options surrounding the NetInstall service, based on Automator-style actions, now calling the service NetInstall. The first step to configuring the NetInstall service is to decide what you want the service to do. There are three options available in System Image Utility (available under the Tools menu of…
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10 Features I Miss From Mountain Lion & Mountain Lion Server
Apple’s not going to slow down innovation just to make me happy. I get that. But what have I noticed most about the differences between Mountain Lion and Mountain Lion Server and their predecessors, and maybe what to do to get some of them back? Podcast Producer: I am going to just put it out there. I liked Podcast Producer. I hope it shows back up in the future, even though I’m controlling my expectations. As someone who deals with a lot of video, there are a number of features that were really helpful to me, with or without Xgrid. I’ve replaced the command line aspects with tools such as…
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Installing and Managing NetBoot Services in OS X Mountain Lion Server
The NetBoot service has allowed administrators of Mac OS X computers to leverage images hosted on a server to boot computers to a central location since OS X was first introduced by Apple. Since the very first versions of OS X, the service has been called NetBoot. In the Server app, Apple has added a number of options surrounding the NetBoot service. It is now called NetInstall. The first step to configuring the NetBoot service is to decide what you want the NetBoot service to do. There are three options: Create a NetBoot Image: Allows Macs to boot over the network to a disk image hosted on a server. Create…
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Changes in Mountain Lion Server
Mountain Lion Server is now available on the OS X App Store and as with the last few updates there are some things missing that you might be expecting and depending on. First up, three major services are gone: Podcast Producer, RADIUS and dhcp. You can still do dhcp as you always did with OS X client as those features work on OS X Server, but the more granular controls available in OS X Server are now gone. The biggest impact of dhcp is probably in testing NetBoot services when there are network issues and you need to prove to network admins that it’s the network and not your server……
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Allow Diskless NetBoot From the Command Line
Client systems don’t have to have drives. Nor should they, in certain circumstances. Therefore, diskless NetBoot has been a part of OS X since the early beginnings. And it’s great provided you have the Server Admin application handy. But if you want to enable/control diskless NetBoot without Server Admin then you’re going to need to use the command line. Each of your NetBoot images will be stored in an array, which can be seen by running the serveradmin command, along with the settings option and then the net boot service, as follows: serveradmin settings netboot Locate the netBootImagesRecordsArray, which shows the images that are served up on the server. Find…
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MacTech InDepth In New York
I have been added as a speaker at MacTech InDepth in New York. If you haven’t signed up yet, and you work with Mac OS X Server then you should really check out the sessions that have been planned: The Elephant in the Room: The New Lion OS X is out, now what? There are a lot of differences to contend with between Lion and Snow Leopard. Now with the new Mountain Lion update, what changes can we expect to see? We discuss the differences in advanced services, GUI simplicity, and Apache management GUI’s. We help you understand the updates in the new OS and make the transition easier. We…