Casper Imaging & CoreStorage Volumes

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NOTE: Casper Imaging 9.65 addresses this & as such the workaround is no longer needed.

As blogged before, a part of our Casper Imaging workflow involves partitioning the “Macintosh HD” for use with FSTAB.

Unfortunately, we have discovered an issue with Casper Imaging & Yosemite shipped Macs as these Macs come with CoreStorage enabled “Macintosh HD”.  This has been logged with JAMF as D-008217 & this post will be updated once resolved.

To get around this defect, I’ve written a little AppleScript app called “CoreStorage Revert” that you can get via a PKG from here. (NOTE: This is for CoreStorage volumes & not Fusion drives).

The PKG is meant to be added to an AutoCasperNBI created NBI, as it removes the com.AutoCasperNBI.CasperImaging.plist as “CoreStorage Revert” launches Casper Imaging itself.

For more details on the app, the why & some rambling findings, see below.

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My Casper Imaging Workflow

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For a number of years I have used the same Imaging workflow, during which time I thought the process was fairly common (with FSTAB being an exception).

However, after speaking to a few fellow Casper Admins it has become clear that my workflow isn’t as common as I thought. So the post below outlines what we do.

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How To: Use fstab within a Casper Imaging workflow

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For my future deployments, i’ve decided to partition my managed Macs HD’s with 33% for the OS (which i’ve kept as being called Macintosh HD) & the remaining 67% as User data (which i’ve labelled Users HD).

To do this i’ve been using fstab to mount the “Users HD” partition to /Users. Below is how i achieve this, hope it helps.

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Cannot Launch Applications From NetBoot Image

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I just spent too many hours struggling with a newly created NetBoot Image that booted, but would not launch any applications from the dock & the item that was due to launch at login didn’t (Casper Imaging). However, if i logged out the NetBoot user & logged back in, all was well!

Come midnight (I was remotely NetBooting a machine), I decided to cut my losses & come in next day which was my day off.

Turns out the NetBoot was fine, the issue was simply that the iMac was building had a PC Keyboard connected & not a Mac one!!

As the tagline says, doing the donkey work to make you look like a smart ass!!