Unable to get any new High Sierra Images to work

millettc
New Contributor

Hi All,

I have taken over from someone who implemented JAMF into the system. I have never really used the system and i am really struggling in getting 'Casper Imaging' to work.

I have made a Base High Sierra DMG via AutoDMG, but everytime i go to Image a laptop, it skips over the 'Base Image' package and then continues to try and install the other software packages.

The old Sys admin left images but they are all old (El Captain) but they work. I really wanted to get a new image made as having to update the laptops from El Captain to High Sierra is abit of a pain.

Im not really sure what i am doing wrong. I think that i might have something to do with the Casper software being out of date (???). Its currently running 9.81 and i am not sure how to update it. I am also having trouble getting the Casper Suite installed on my Mac as i keep getting 'Java 1.7 needs to be installed' even though i have Java installed.

Sorry if i wasnt that clear, i am very new to Jamf and Casper and i am still trying to figure out how everything works.

Any helps would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

1 REPLY 1

easyedc
Valued Contributor II

Morning @millettc. Can I back up and ask a few bigger picture questions? Are you doing erase and installs of workstations? Or are you doing in-place upgrades? What's your environment like? The idea of "imaging" is dying, and will probably be officially dead come this afternoon when Apple releases macOS 10.14. Apple's guidance is to use their installer, which lays down firmware updates, during the installation. There are very manual workarounds, but Apple appears to be closing some of those holes actively.

If you're doing in-place upgrades, JAMF is great because you can just build a policy to deploy and then install macOS upgrades. If it's clean installs, you may want to bite the bullet and run the installer and wipe the drives at that time. After they're imaged, letting policies install your required software can happen automatically. It sounds like you're in a boat that a lot of us found ourselves in over the last 1-2 years. At some point, you're probably going to have to bite to bullet and go through some pain.