Newbie question

Abdi
New Contributor

JSS

4 REPLIES 4

ahopkins
New Contributor II

Hello and welcome to the group.

If you are target imaging, you can set Casper imaging to prompted for a name each time.

However, when setting up groups, this may make it hard to know what computers are which.

strider_knh
Contributor II

You didn't mention how you were naming the stations, how you were imaging, or if these stations are already in your database.

You can setup Pre-Stage Imaging. Once you scope a station to the Pre-Stage then every time it runs Casper Imaging those setting will load.

When you image a station you can save all your setting for that station as Auto-Run data so that next time you image it will automatically load your previous settings. This includes the station name.

Both of these require using a Netboot or NetInstall server, neither works when using Target Boot mode.

As for AD. AD names do not have to match the machine name, they are just the same by default unless you manually change it. If you rename a station using Casper it will not change the name used in the AD binding. Casper does not store the name used when bound to AD, it just store the machine name. You could right an Extension Attribute to save this info if you use a different AD and Machine names.

stevewood
Honored Contributor II
Honored Contributor II

Welcome to JAMF Nation!

Couple of quick corrections:

- When using a Pre-Stage, it is only good for the first time a machine is added to the Casper database. So once you image your machine and it is added to the database, the Pre-Stage will not fire off if you open Casper Imaging again. However, if you then delete the machine from the database and launch Casper Imaging, then the Pre-Stage will take effect again.

- Pre-Stage and AutoRun data do not require NetBoot or NetInstall. They will both work with Target Mode Imaging or booting from an external USB/Thunderbolt drive. The only requirement is Casper Imaging.

@Abdi][/url if your machines are already in the Casper database, then Casper Imaging will try to recycle the name the computer is known by in the database.

If the machines are NOT in the database, then you'd probably need to look at using a script to query AD and re-name the computer during the first boot process. Of course, you'd need to have a way to identify that particular machine in the AD before you could grab the name. Once you had the name you could use "jamf setComputerName" to set the name and then follow that with "jamf recon" to get it into the database.

Hope that helps!

strider_knh
Contributor II

Thanks for the corrections, don't want my mis-information out there. I haven't used or configured those portions of the JSS recently so I guess I remembered it wrong.