casper imagin always show the same computer name on different computer

wilsonch
New Contributor

I have notice this problem, where if a computer has already been imaged by casper imaging once, it will always default to a particular computer name which have no relation to the one that I am imaging.

Eg. I am imaging 3 computers with computer name "10", "11",12", in casper imaging they will all be prefill it as "5", tried using "store all imagin information for this computer in the JSS" but it does nothing to help.

Wilson

6 REPLIES 6

Bauer
New Contributor

Are you using a Thunderbolt or USB to Ethernet adapter when you image those computers?

jarednichols
Honored Contributor

^this.

Add your dongle MAC addresses to the removable list. If you don't you're going to have all kinds of problems. I just had a tech ignore that part of my documentation and now has to re-image 24 MacBook Airs.

admin_eit
New Contributor

I have the same problem after I re-imaged relocated computers and cannot rename them - they keep defaulting to their old names. They are bound to AD with new names. I used Thunderbolt and USB external drives to image the machines. Please let me know how I can rename the computers.

jarednichols
Honored Contributor

The big issue here is making sure the dongles that you're imaging with are added to the removable MAC address list. These symptoms are prime examples of this. In fact, you want ALL dongles to be added to that list, ideally. This is a recognized problem and JAMF is moving Casper 9 to using UDID as the unique identifier instead of MAC address. Until then, you must add them to the removable MAC address list.

Ideally, it goes like this:

  1. Remove the removable MAC address from any systems that have them as one of their interfaces.
  2. Add the removable MAC addresses to the removable MAC address list.
  3. Manually run a QuickAdd.pkg on all effected systems to ensure that the systems have their own entry in the Casper database. (Up until this point, you had multiple machines overwriting the same database entry)
  4. Hope you didn't miss any.

There is a particular instance where this is not enough, however. If you are using Casper to manage your FileVault 2 setups and are using individual recovery keys (alone or in conjunction with an Institutional key) you MUST re-image your systems.

Why? When you have multiple systems pointed to the same database entry, the recovery key for systems will get overwritten. Once they're overwritten, the key is gone and you cannot use an individual key to unlock/decrypt that system.

This is why adding removable MAC addresses to the list is incredibly important. I've had a few techs find this out the hard way by not reading my documentation thoroughly and steaming ahead thinking they know which steps are optional and which are required. None of my documented steps were optional and one tech in particular found this out when he had to re-image 25 systems due to his ignorance of the deployment steps :)

admin_eit
New Contributor

Many thanks for this.
The labs were needed urgently - I'm afraid I had to re-image all systems after I deleted the machines record in JSS, that was long and painful. But I will keep and follow your instructions next time.

wilsonch
New Contributor

Hi,

Thank you for all the responses, however we do not use a dongle for imaging and we use the on board network to image.

Any other idea?

Wilson