NetBoot9 from Leopard Server

[MacintoshRescue]

Greetings,

I like having Mac OS 9 available via NetBoot so that if I rescue a Macintosh with a faulty optical drive I can start from the network and run the Mac OS 9 installer from a disk image which all works perfectly from Mac OS X Server 10.4; however I want to use a virtual machine instead of an electricity hungry Power Mac and I have a working Mac OS X Server 10.5.8 VM in Parallels Desktop Pro running as a process with the bridged Ethernet option. My Leopard server VM provides AFP shares to Mac OS 9 clients perfectly but the last hurdle to repurposing my Power Mac is to get Apple's NetBoot9 image working from the Leopard server.

I was curious if anybody here had got NetBoot9 working with Leopard Server.

Below is the NetBoot service log:

Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: server starting
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: re-reading /etc/bootptab
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: Loaded 0 entries from bootptab (0 bad)
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: server name leopard.flying-machine.net
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: interface en0: ip 10.0.1.105 mask 255.255.255.0
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: bsdpd: re-reading configuration
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: bsdpd: shadow file size will be set to 48 megabytes
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: bsdpd: age time 00:15:00
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: NetBoot: parse vendor specific options failed, missing vendor specific options
Feb 17 23:09:00 leopard bootpd[355]: service time 0.000186 seconds
Feb 17 23:09:05 leopard bootpd[355]: BSDP INFORM [en0] 1,0:3:93:71:94:a8 NetBoot001 arch=ppc sysid=PowerBook3,4
Feb 17 23:09:05 leopard bootpd[355]: NetBoot: [1,0:3:93:71:94:a8] BSDP ACK

sent 10.0.1.49 pktsize 300
Feb 17 23:09:05 leopard bootpd[355]: service time 0.000584 seconds
Feb 17 23:09:05 leopard bootpd[355]: BSDP INFORM

[en0] 1,0:3:93:71:94:a8 NetBoot001 arch=ppc sysid=PowerBook3,4
Feb 17 23:09:05 leopard bootpd[355]: replyfile /private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/MacOS92Default.nbi/Mac OS ROM
Feb 17 23:09:05 leopard bootpd[355]: NetBoot: [1,0:3:93:71:94:a8] BSDP ACK[SELECT] sent 10.0.1.49 pktsize 474
Feb 17 23:09:05 leopard bootpd[355]: service time 0.113371 seconds

I am using MacOS92Default.nbi folder which I copied from the Tiger server and I cannot get it to boot from Leopard server. My theory is that there might be an incompatibility with AFP 3.2 and AFP 3.2+(version running with Leopard). If anybody knows how to get this working I'd be most grateful.[/list]

[devils_advisor]

try this here https://web.archive.org/web/20111011130557/http://www.deploystudio.com/Home.html


author moved on and  there is not much info left
the name of the app is deploystudio.

[MacintoshRescue]

Hi and thanks for the link.

Again I have the same problem and cannot boot into Mac OS 9 over a network: it seems to be an issue with the server and I suspect AFP. I get so far with booting and the client gets stuck at a floppy disk icon with a flashing question mark suggesting that the NetBoot HD image cannot be mounted.

I'm now going to make a NetBoot image from a machine with Mac OS X plus Mac OS 9 with a universal system folder and the Mac OS 9 Installation files so that I can install Mac OS 9 onto the clients hard disk from Classic on the NetBoot installation, hopefully.

I've been through the NetBoot9 disk image, gone through the scripts, verified permissions and resource forks but still no luck with Mac OS 9. The NetBoot Server definitely works as I can boot two Mac OS X Leopard NetInstall images so it might just not be possible to host Mac OS 9 images on Leopard Server's NetBoot service. If I'm wrong please correct me.

[devils_advisor]

have you checked the logfiles on the server side? this could help to narrow the or isolate the problem. try to boot into a osx image for example and see if that works.

[MacintoshRescue]

Hello,
Sorry for taking so long to reply.

I can confirm that NetBooting a Mac OS X Image works perfectly from my Leopard server.

The following is what happens in the log when trying to boot Mac OS 9:

Oct 14 10:04:41 leopard bootpd[426]: BSDP INFORM [en0] 1,0:3:93:71:94:a8 arch=ppc sysid=PowerBook3,4
Oct 14 10:04:41 leopard bootpd[426]: NetBoot: [1,0:3:93:71:94:a8] BSDP ACK

sent 10.0.1.4 pktsize 383
Oct 14 10:04:41 leopard bootpd[426]: service time 0.000597 seconds
Oct 14 10:04:48 leopard bootpd[426]: service time 3.610290 seconds
Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: BSDP DISCOVER

[en0] 1,0:3:93:71:94:a8 NetBoot002 arch=ppc sysid=PowerBook3,4
Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: replyfile /private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/MacOS92Default.nbi/Mac OS ROM
Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: replying to 0.0.0.0
Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: BSDP OFFER sent [1,0:3:93:71:94:a8] pktsize 471
Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: service time 0.308342 seconds
Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: NetBoot: parse vendor specific options failed, missing vendor specific options
Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: service time 0.000455 seconds

What do you think?
I find the following line interesting "Oct 14 10:05:18 leopard bootpd[426]: replying to 0.0.0.0" given that the computer trying to boot has the IP address 10.0.1.4
[/list]

[Philgood]

Hi. I'm trying the same and searched a lot on Google about netbooting OS9 from 10.5 server.
I'm getting the same symptom: a blinking floppy with question mark.
Did anyone know what to do or isn't it possible ?

[kby]

I've fiddled with this over a long time. I still haven't gotten it to work, but I do have some information. The post by MacintoshRescue seems to be on the right track. I WireSharked the netboot traffic and what is failing is an AFP mount of NetBootSP0 (the NetBoot server's primary directory where the .nbi files ares stored).

There is something odd at this moment in that I can "see" NetBootClients0 (the client's directory where shadow files are stored for netbooting OSX if I browse the AFP shares, but not NetBootSP0, even though it has the same sharing permissions and is enclosed in /Library which is also shared. I'm sure I've also seen NetBootSP0 shared before but I probably didn't try netbooting OS 9 when I could see it as I wasn't working on that. My sharing is a little bit odd on this machine because I also have it set up to do some diskless NetBooting of Hackintosh (OS-X on a standard PC) and Ubuntu through the regular netboot server interface.

I have another Leopard server which is more standard as well as an Tiger server, so I'll try those at some point (probably not for at least a month) and see if I can glean any more information, now that I know the problem appears to be Leopard specific at least for some people.-kby

[Philgood]

I have it working!
I followed this thread.

https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=28133

There is a slight typo I remember but it's working.
I successfully netbooted G3 and G4 powerbooks from my G5 Quad with Leopard server installed.

[kby]

I figured out what's going on. I am not sure whether the link to betaarchives will always work as it doesn't  address what I figured out was my issue. The stuff that's in there should essentially work out of the box with the Apple supplied OS 9 NetBoot image (although I use a later ROM file).

It appears that by default, when you create a netboot server on 10.5, both the NetBootSP0 and NetBootClients0 (different numbers if you have more than one distribution point) are shared out differently. NetBootClients0 is shared out over AFP, SMB, and NFS. This is needed because diskless nettboot (in OS X) requires the ability to access the shadow file under AFP. This actually caused problems in the High Sierra beta: this symptom was that NetBoot basically worked, but it didn't come up truly diskless; it used write disk access on the first volume it found for the shadow file, where "changes" to the underlying files system are actually done so that they are visible to the running (netbooted) system, but don't alter the actual netboot image. The change in High Sierra was that the AFP protocol wasn't pre-linked into the kernel, so at the relatively early time in NetBoot where it tries to AFP mount the shadow file, it can't because the protocol driver for AFP doesn't get loaded until much later.
The server image directory (NetBootSP0) actually only requires either NFS access (if you use NFS) or read access by the web server (if you use HTTP, although i never got that to work well, either; never tried too hard). So when Leopard enables sharing permissions on the NetBootSP0 directlry, it essentially enables them for everything EXCEPT AFP. Hence, when the ROM image running on the netbooting machine tries to access the disk image via mounting the NetBootSP0 share, it can't because it's not shared over AFP.
So the obvious solution is to make sure the volume is shared over AFP, but how to do that? You would do that in Leopard (not the server version) by accessing the protocal options through the Sharing preference pane of System Preferences when you set up the share, but that's not applicable to Leopard Server. Editing /var/db/dslocal/Default/config/SharePoints/NetBootSP0.plist can do this; hopefully the file is there as it should be; if not you have to create it) and restarting the AFP Server should fix this, but there's a less hacky way.
Open up ServerAdmin. In the main screen of your server, click on the "File Sharing" tab. In the pane that shows up, click on "Sharepoints" (rather than volumes). Scroll through the list and you should see the NetBootSP0 entry. If not, you can either "share" the folder through the Finder as you would any other folder, or create a new sharepoint with that name (or NetBootSP1, etc. if this is not your boot volume—whatever the directory is. Either while your creating it or if you already have it, the bottom half of the window is dedicated to a pane that has 2 choices: "Permissions" and "Protocols" and it's usually preset to "Permissions." The important permissions are Owner rw (owner should be root) and Other (or World) r. Group is usually admin and permissions rw, but I don't think that's that important. Now change the panel to "Protocols" Select the AFP tab, and make sure the boxes for "Share over AFP" and "AFP Guest Access" are on.
Close the window and the changes should take place live without restarting the AFP server or rebooting.

You can check this by going to another machine (for me, anything up through High Sierra at least seems to work; I don't have access to a machine running anything later). If you the look at shares on your server, the default appears to be to normally start with AFP if it works, You should see various shared folders and you should see both NetBootSP0 and NetBootClients0. This should be true even if you are accessing as guest rather than a real user.

If everything else on your NetBoot server works for NetBooting OS X, it should now be able to NetBoot OS9 as well.