NetBooting Lab and Tutor Macs

Pressing Option-N during startup will cause a Mac to NetBoot from the default boot image if one is available on the subnet (and in the same building at UW).

To force a system to NetBoot to a specific image (IMAGE) on a specific server (1.2.3.4), the BIOS can be set using the 'bless' command:

sudo bless --netboot --booter tftp://1.2.3.4/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/IMAGE.nbi/i386/booter --kernel \ 
tftp://1.2.3.4/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/IMAGE.nbi/i386/mach.macosx --options \ 
"rp=nfs:1.2.3.4:/private/tftpboot/NetBoot/NetBootSP0:IMAGE.nbi/DeployStudioRuntime.sparseimage"

On reboot (shutdown -r) the system should boot without intervention into the DeployStudio Runtime environment, loading the IMAGE image and performing any pre- and post-install scripting set up for the image on the DeployStudio server.

-- DawnKeenan - 12 May 2009