OS X NetBoot now supported on ESXi 5.5

VMware Fusion‘s support of NetBoot, combined with DeployStudio’s deployment flexibility, has given me the ability to quickly build VMs to desired specifications since VMware Fusion 5.x.

This ability has been hugely useful to me and I’ve long wanted that same flexibility when building ESXi-hosted VMs. With the release of ESXi 5.5, VMware has now included NetBoot support for OS X VMs on ESXi. This gives me the ability to build VMs on an ESXi host using the same DeployStudio-driven deployment process that I’ve been using to build VMs in Fusion.

Needless to say, this greatly simplifies my build process and all but eliminates any need for me to build OS X VMs in Fusion first and then transfer them to an ESXi server. Thanks to the folks at VMware who built this support into ESXi; it’s going to make life a lot easier for Mac admins who want to virtualize OS X.

Updating my ESXi server from 5.1 to 5.5

In the wake of VMware’s release of ESXi 5.5 on Monday, September 23, I needed to upgrade my home’s ESXi 5.1 server to ESXi 5.5. Since I didn’t want to fire up my Windows VM, I did the upgrade from 5.1 to 5.5 via SSH and esxcli. For those interested, see below the jump for the details of the process I used.

Uninstalling Casper on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

I recently had to roll my Casper test server back, as I had been testing Casper 9.x but needed to verify something worked in Casper 8.x. Since I hadn’t found a good knowledge base article on JAMF Nation for uninstalling Casper’s JSS from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server, I asked JAMF Support how to do this. Here’s the procedure I used, based on their response:

Note: This procedure should only be used if you need to completely uninstall your Casper JSS. It removes all certificates, databases and anything else stored in your JSS.

1. SSH into the RHEL server as my user account.

2. su into the root account on the server by running the following command:

su root

3. Stop JAMF’s Tomcat by running the following command:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/jamf.tomcat7 stop

4. Delete the jss directory from /usr/local by running the following command:

rm -rf /usr/local/jss

Once /usr/local/jss was removed, I needed to remove the JSS’s MySQL database in order to complete the uninstall. Here’s the procedure I used:

5. Run the following command to get a MySQL prompt:

mysql

6. From the mysql> prompt, run the following command to remove the existing database:

mysql> drop database jamfsoftware;

7. Exit out of MySQL with the following command:

mysql> exit;

At this point, the JAMF-provided parts of the JSS were all removed. I hadn’t removed anything from my JSS’s file share, so all my installers and deployable scripts were intact. I then rebooted, just to make sure no stray processes remained before I tried reinstalling Casper 8.x.

Once the server was back up, I ran the following procedure to prepare the server for re-installing Casper 8.x.:

1. SSH into the RHEL server as my user account.

2. su into the root account on the server by running the following command:

su root

3. Run the following command to get a MySQL prompt:

mysql

4. From the mysql> prompt, run the following command to create a new empty jamfsoftware database for the JSS:

mysql> create database jamfsoftware;

5. Exit out of MySQL with the following command:

mysql> exit;

With the new jamfsoftware database created in MySQL on my test server, I was then ready to reinstall Casper 8.x.

Session videos and slides now available from MacSysAdmin 2013

The documentation from MacSysAdmin 2013 is now available, with the session slides and videos being accessible from the link below:

http://documentation.macsysadmin.se

The video of my session is available for download from here:

http://docs.macsysadmin.se/2013/video/Day2Session5.mp4

I also like to thank Tycho Sjögren and Apoio AB again for inviting me to speak. I had a great time.

Building a Grand Unified Xcode 5.0 installer for Mountain Lion

Apple has released Xcode 5.0 through the Mac App Store for all Macs running 10.8.4 and higher. The command line tools can be installed separately through the Xcode preferences, in the Downloads section. You now need an Apple Developer Connection account to install the Xcode 5 command line tools via the Xcode preferences, though a free ADC membership is sufficient.

For my users who are developers, I wanted to include Xcode 5.0 in their new machine builds and also install the command line tools automatically without needing to enter an Apple ID. I also wanted to build this installer as a flat package, so I’m shifting from my previous method using Iceberg to using Packages to build the installer package. See below the jump for the details.

Slides from the FileVault 2 Session at MacSysAdmin 2013

For those who wanted a copy of my FileVault 2 session slides from MacSysAdmin 2013, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format.

PDF document link: http://tinyurl.com/MacSysAd2013PDF

Keynote slides link: http://tinyurl.com/MacSysAd2013key

VMware Fusion 6.0 VMs and FileVault 2

As part of my FileVault 2 testing, I do a lot of work with OS X VMs running in VMware Fusion. With 10.8.5’s release yesterday, I built a new OS X VM using this process. Once it was built, I tried enabling FileVault 2 and hit an odd issue. FileVault 2 was reporting that it was enabling, but on reboot I was not getting the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen. Instead, I was passed onto the regular login window.

This is not the correct behavior for FileVault 2, so I was concerned that something in Fusion 6 had broken my ability to work with FileVault 2. After some work though, I was able to get FileVault 2 working again in VMware Fusion 6.0. See below the jump for details.

Java 7 Update 40 runs natively in VMware Fusion OS X VMs

An issue that I’ve been dealing with for a while has been that Oracle’s Java 7 did not run natively in VMware Fusion. VMware had created a patch for OS X VMs, but it was only designed to be run in OS X VMs running 10.8.x.

As of today, that issue has now been resolved. With the release of Java 7 Update 40, Java 7 now runs natively in VMware Fusion OS X VMs running 10.7.5 and 10.8.4. Thanks to the OpenJDK team, Oracle and VMware for their work in getting this fixed.