is an IT Systems Specialist, currently concentrating on developing Mac Support strategies for a major British University. I place strong importance in understanding and responding to the computing requirements of Academics, particularly in Science. With a Ph.D. in Geochemistry, I enjoy the interface between science and computing. At other times, I like to run, cycle, climb up rock faces and travel the world.
Subject: Macs (old blog for archive purposes) 
Hi!
Regarding this post; https://grpugh.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/deploystudio-1-6-12-with-late-2012-mac-minis-and-early-2015-macbook-pros/
Do you know if the deployment server has to run OSX Yosemite as well? I have tried creating a new netboot-image on a Macbook Pro early 2015 with OSX 10.10.2, then moved the image over to the mac mini server running OSX 10.9.5 and DS 1.6.12 and then run the script with the image mounted. But i still get the round error-sign when trying to boot while holding the N-button.
Thanks for any help!
Best regards
Robin
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Hi Robin, I haven’t actually tried the NetBoot image as my work network is too intricate. I’ve only tried the USB stick method. You may need to check the contents of NBImageInfo.plist within the NBI to ensure your Mac’s model is in the allowed list (but I’m speculating here). I’ll adapt to post to make it clear that I haven’t yet tried the NetBoot modification.
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Hey Graham,
Regarding your Munki post w/r/t the 4 “computer information” fields: Do you happen to know where it puts the information you put into Local Hostname and Computer Name? It doesn’t immediately change the hostname; it doesn’t even do it after the Configuration step where that’s supposed to trigger. I have a script that runs right after this step that curls an entry into an inventory database, but it keeps getting the hostnames wrong when I try to retrieve it with the “hostname” command. If I could figure out what to read from this would be a lot easier!
Thanks for your informative work.
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Hi Starkruzr
Sorry, only just spotted this comment, but I think this got answered in the Slack forum? You said your script couldn’t run after the first reboot for some reason? In which case I think you’re looking for the DS_HOSTNAME variable. Most of the available variables are listed in the file ds_example.sh in your DeployStudio Scripts folder.
Interestingly though, the fields for the Computer Information Fields aren’t. It seems you should be able to read the contents of each host’s entry on the server using the defaults write command (see http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VsuIZBlkhE8J:krypted.com/mac-os-x/deploystudio-from-the-command-line/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari – I quote the Google cache URL as the Krypted site appears to be down right now), but I’m not sure how to access it from the client in this way.
In ds_example.sh, it also explains how you can set custom Runtime Environment Variables. That is interesting…
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Just wanted to say thanks for this — you’re right, the DS_HOSTNAME variable was what I needed here. Also, I was trying to find some way of recording the name/email of the user who was building the machine, and eventually found that while the stable version of CocoaDialog doesn’t work, the beta of CocoaDialog 3.0 *does*. (The stable version complains about the OpenGL framework not being the right architecture, which is… interesting. 😛 )
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