Hi all,
I’m new to all this image building stuff, but I really want to be more efficient at deploying images out to the more than 100 Macs I am in charge of in my job. So, I’ve been researching all my options, and finally decided to just jump in and build an image to deploy!

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy instaDMG was to work with, and though I don’t expect it to go smoothly, would really like to try out deploying my image to a machine for the first time. I realize that I can’t do this until I boot said machine from an alternate OS source than the one that runs the hard drive of the Mac. So, I attempted and somewhat successfully created a netinstall image. Ultimately, I think I messed up on this part, and what I really want is a netboot image instead, but I can fix that later. I’m more concerned with the current problem.

I have been unable to boot the Mac on my network that I want to try deploying to from the netinstall image I created and put on my server. I have researched and tried everything I can find, but I am totally at a loss now about how to make this Mac recognize on bootup that there is something for it to grab on the network. All I get is the flashing world at start up, and then after a few minutes of that it gives up and boots from its hard drive.

Please help me! How can I make this thing work?

Here is what I have tried:
I created the netinstall image and placed it in the /Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0 folder that was created when I activated a NetBoot server.
I set up the NetBoot and NetBoot Client sharepoints for access, and even created an additional new user called “image” (nonadministrative) for later authentication.
I also tried telling these two sharepoints to automount, thinking maybe that was the problem.

It is entirely possible that some of the settings I chose to use during set up of any of these things were wrong, though I tried to follow instructions I had from numerous places as carefully as I could. The problem is, I am not a networking person, and really am a biologist by trade – the computer stuff is an aside, and a self-taught sort of thing.

Can someone help me trouble shoot my issue here?

Thanks much in advance!