Hi,

Did you create the image and netinstall set on an G5 iMac? This can cause problems if you have created the image on say a G4.

I remember having a similar problem when we upgraded to new iMac G5s.

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: coolpor2[/u][p]Mactroll;

I’ve managed to get verbose output from the NB startup on the client. It’s gets an IP from our dhcp server, locates the path of the image on the server
but then spits out RPC timeout error. On Bombich.com he says that this is likely a NFS issue, but I’ve managed to run the mnt commands he suggest
to check nfs connectivity when booted locally on the client machines. aaargh!!![/p][/QUOTE]

I would guess that your mach.macosx.mkext in the i386 directory on the server (that gets sucked down by TFTP) doesn’t have all the required networking type bits in it.

That is — you are getting the kernel initial boot image via TFTP, and the kernel has started to spit some stuff out (boot loader has relinquished control, kernel has taken over), it then goes looking for the “/” root directory. The kernel cannot do the NFS connection bit though because some part of the network card driver or network filesystem driver is missing (kext cache needs to be built specially to support NFS boot — see the bottom of the Bombich article I think).

I’m having almost the exact same problem,

I had two images enabled on the server, but the the netinstall process defaulted to the older image, even though I select the newer image. It did however install perfectly. I didn’t think to try a verbose install before I disabled the older image.

With the older image disabled, the newer image would hang there with the ticker flicking over. When I viewed the verbose output, it created the RAM discs, then:

[code]netinfod local[26]: unable to bind to parent – RPC: Timed Out
lookupd [43]: NetInfo connection failed on server 127.0.0.1/local
kern.maxunodes: 2500 -> 2864[/code]

later in the output it said:

[code]lookupd[96] Can’t load /system/library/PrivateFrameworks/NetInfo.framework/Resources/lookupd/Agents/DS.bundle/DS
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Support/ATSServer: (-1) Cannot use ATS Persistent Store – switching to old FODB cache code
/etc/rc.cdrom.postWS: line 35: kill: (108) – No such process[/code]

it also reported that the files for quartz weren’t available, then [code]Network Installer has quit due to an unexpected error. (exit code 133) Please restart your computer[/code]

Interesting that without being in verbose mode, I’d never have seen these messages, the GUI doesn’t produce any notifications at all.

Now the annoying part: I’ve opened up both the old and new images, and those files that verbose mode marked as missing or not available are indeed not there, but are missing in both the working and not working images.

And the really annoying part: coolpor2 your way of fixing the image is exactly the way that I did it in the first place. I created the system on my G5, then started it as a firewire drive and hooked it up to my xServe, and created the image directly on the xServe with SIU. So I’m now trying the way that failed for you, and if that doesn’t work – and nobody here replies with a suggestion – I’ll be using Mike’s tools.

I was having the same problem with a client 10.4.10 image. I finally gave up and called Apple and was informed that the client image must be at 10.4.8 due to a bug introduced in 10.4.9. Once the image is created, I was told I can use the System Image Utility to apply the combo update to the image, but the image must be created with a 10.4.8 client! Was told that the problem is in engineering at the moment and the tech didn’t know if it would be fixed in at 10.4.x release or 10.5.x.

I am now rebuilding my image using 10.4.8 operating system.

Joel

Robert,

You rock, that worked perfectly. Thanks for the post.