Mac Admin Corner | Desktop Management

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NetBoot Across Subnets from Mike Bombich has a problem setting the startup disk on a PPC machine when the target is a Leopard NetBoot set. You may see this in your system.log on your NetBoot server:

Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[781]: adding RRQ to cache: 170.140.xxx.xxx,NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/booter
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/boote]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/boot]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/boo]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/bo]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/b]
As you can see, it is looking for the booter file at the root of the netboot set. The problem lies in the postflight script within the nbas.pkg package.

To fix the nbas.pkg:

1. Right click (or control+click) the nbas.pkg (or whatever your renamed it to) and "Show Package Contents"
2. Browse to Contents/Resources/ and open the postflight file in your favorite text editor (I prefer vi or TextWrangler)
3. add "ppc" to the following line as highlighted (including the extra \\)

if [ "`arch`" == "ppc" ]; then
/usr/sbin/nvram boot-args="rp=${protocol}:${server}:/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/${sharepoint}:${setName}/${imageName}" boot-file="enet:${server},NetBoot\\${sharepoint}\\${setName}\\ppc\\mach.macosx" boot-device="enet:${server},NetBoot\\${sharepoint}\\${setName}\\ppc\\booter"

4. Save the file

This has been tested on my NetRestore, DeployStudio and SIU NetBoot sets.

Note: I had to edit the file with sudo to prevent a permissions error when I tried to copy the package back up to a server share.

Mike Bombich has offically stopped development on NetRestore.

Read the story here.

I'm very sad to see it go, though not surprised. NR has been open source for years, but no one ever contributed besides Mike and it was in need of a rewrite. Now that it is EOL, several people on the Mac Enterprise list are talking about a rewrite project. I know Mike wont say it, so I'll say it for him...

WTF! Why did you wait all these years to start contributing!

It's not like he just now made it open source. I've heard several times about others that have rewritten NR or NetRestore PHPServices to better fit their enviornment, but never shared with the community or with Mike. And to those I am flipping you the bird.

Thanks for the great tool Mike! It will be greatly missed.

Several web sites have begun requiring Flash 10 to play their content. This is partially because the PC version of Flash 9 had some security problems that I won't get into here.

The good news:
Adobe provides their Mac version as a package installer.

The bad news:
There is a problem with Adobe's Flash Player 10 installer for Mac. If you deploy using ARD, LANDesk or another deployment tool to machines that are sitting at the login window, the installer runs an applescript which will launch the Finder as the current user. Well, if you're at the login window, that user is root. So the Finder launches behind the login window. If someone then logs in without the machine rebooting, the currently logged in user now has an instance of the Finder running as root with full root privileges. Some users will notice this because the contents of their home folder will be missing, logging out and logging back in will fix this.

Once way to fix this in the installer is to modify the postflight script within the in "Adobe Flash Player.pkg/Contents/Resources/" and comment out (add a # in front of the line) the following line:

osascript "$1/Contents/Resources/RemoveUserFPInstall.applescript"

The ramifications of doing this are that Flash plugins that reside in the currently logged in users ~/Library/Internet\ Plug-ins will not be deleted and therefore would be used instead of the newly installed plugin in /Library/Internet Plug-ins. If this is a problem for you, you may want to modify the postflight further to look for and delete the plugin from each users home folder (without involving the Finder) like Adobe should have.

Adobe is not the only one that has an installer that launches the Finder at the login window. Two others that come to mind are Parallels and Flip4Mac. With theirs, they are just doing a simple "open /path/to/app/folder" to show the contents of what was installed so that's easier to fix.

I have moved this site to it's own domain and it is now using WordPress instead of blogger. If you are seeing this message in your RSS reader, you need to update your RSS subscription. Please go to http://www.macadmincorner.com.

If you are subscribed to the FeedBurner feed (which I have been using for about a year), you don't need to update your subscription.

NetBoot Across Subnets from Mike Bombich has a problem setting the startup disk on a PPC machine when the target is a Leopard NetBoot set. You may see this in your system.log on your NetBoot server:

Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[781]: adding RRQ to cache: 170.140.xxx.xxx,NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/booter
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/boote]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/boot]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/boo]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/bo]
Dec 29 10:42:08 server tftpd[782]: file not found, trying [/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DS_MP_2008-12-29.nbi/b]
As you can see, it is looking for the booter file at the root of the netboot set. The problem lies in the postflight script within the nbas.pkg package.

To fix the nbas.pkg:

1. Right click (or control+click) the nbas.pkg (or whatever your renamed it to) and "Show Package Contents"
2. Browse to Contents/Resources/ and open the postflight file in your favorite text editor (I prefer vi or TextWrangler)
3. add "ppc" to the following line as highlighted (including the extra \\)

if [ "`arch`" == "ppc" ]; then
/usr/sbin/nvram boot-args="rp=${protocol}:${server}:/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/${sharepoint}:${setName}/${imageName}" boot-file="enet:${server},NetBoot\\${sharepoint}\\${setName}\\ppc\\mach.macosx" boot-device="enet:${server},NetBoot\\${sharepoint}\\${setName}\\ppc\\booter"

4. Save the file

This has been tested on my NetRestore, DeployStudio and SIU NetBoot sets.

Note: I had to edit the file with sudo to prevent a permissions error when I tried to copy the package back up to a server share.

Mike Bombich has offically stopped development on NetRestore.

Read the story here.

I'm very sad to see it go, though not surprised. NR has been open source for years, but no one ever contributed besides Mike and it was in need of a rewrite. Now that it is EOL, several people on the Mac Enterprise list are talking about a rewrite project. I know Mike wont say it, so I'll say it for him...

WTF! Why did you wait all these years to start contributing!

It's not like he just now made it open source. I've heard several times about others that have rewritten NR or NetRestore PHPServices to better fit their enviornment, but never shared with the community or with Mike. And to those I am flipping you the bird.

Thanks for the great tool Mike! It will be greatly missed.

Several web sites have begun requiring Flash 10 to play their content. This is partially because the PC version of Flash 9 had some security problems that I won't get into here.

The good news:
Adobe provides their Mac version as a package installer.

The bad news:
There is a problem with Adobe's Flash Player 10 installer for Mac. If you deploy using ARD, LANDesk or another deployment tool to machines that are sitting at the login window, the installer runs an applescript which will launch the Finder as the current user. Well, if you're at the login window, that user is root. So the Finder launches behind the login window. If someone then logs in without the machine rebooting, the currently logged in user now has an instance of the Finder running as root with full root privileges. Some users will notice this because the contents of their home folder will be missing, logging out and logging back in will fix this.

Once way to fix this in the installer is to modify the postflight script within the in "Adobe Flash Player.pkg/Contents/Resources/" and comment out (add a # in front of the line) the following line:

osascript "$1/Contents/Resources/RemoveUserFPInstall.applescript"

The ramifications of doing this are that Flash plugins that reside in the currently logged in users ~/Library/Internet\ Plug-ins will not be deleted and therefore would be used instead of the newly installed plugin in /Library/Internet Plug-ins. If this is a problem for you, you may want to modify the postflight further to look for and delete the plugin from each users home folder (without involving the Finder) like Adobe should have.

Adobe is not the only one that has an installer that launches the Finder at the login window. Two others that come to mind are Parallels and Flip4Mac. With theirs, they are just doing a simple "open /path/to/app/folder" to show the contents of what was installed so that's easier to fix.