bless command fails with --setBoot option

Originator:justindelliott
Number:rdar://22170141 Date Originated:06-Aug-2015 10:29 AM
Status:CLOSED - Behaves correctly Resolved:
Product:OS X Product Version:10.11 Beta (15A244d)
Classification:Bug Reproducible:Yes, Always
 
Summary:
The bless command is failing to update the EFI nvram setting to boot from the restored system disk when using the '--setBoot' option.

This has previously worked on 10.10.

Without this ability to change the boot drive via sudo and bless we will not be able to upgrade our 700 lab Macs to OS X El Capitan when it's publicly available, which means that we will not be purchasing any Macs. The reason we need this is that every summer we restore a based clean system disk image to all lab Macs and then they apply the appropriate software packages for the next academic year.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Restore a system disk image that was created and scanned for restore with Disk Utility.
2. Run the bless command with sudo rights and the --setBoot argument, and it fails:

CB108-82:~ justin$ sudo bless -folder '/Volumes/Mac HD/System/Library/CoreServices' --bootefi '/Volumes/Mac HD/usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi' -setBoot
Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc
CB108-82:~ justin$ echo $?
3


Expected Results:
The bless command should be exit cleanly and the Mac should boot from the new blessed disk volume.

Actual Results:
The bless command fails with a terse error message of "Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc".

Version:
10.11 Beta (15A244d)

Notes:
This has a huge impact on us and if we don't have another way to change the start up disk via a command line interface method (which must be automated) I fear that we won't be able to further support Macs  for our student computing labs.

Configuration:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)

Attachments:
'MacBook Pro.spx' and 'Screen Shot 2015-08-06 at 10.17.56 AM.png' were successfully uploaded.

Comments

Apple didn't read this at all

This is hitting us too. We don't need to netboot we need to set the local volume.

By icpalmer at Oct. 30, 2015, 4:37 p.m. (reply...)

Apple's Reponse

Apple Developer Relations13-Aug-2015 05:44 PM

Engineering has the following feedback for you:

A workaround will be to configure an IP address for a server to NetBoot the machines from and perform the re-image from the NetBoot’ed OS.

The way to do this is to use NetBoot, configure the machines to boot from the list of IP that want to provide and use bless --netboot.

Otherwise, they can disable SIP on these machines.

Engineering has determined that this issue behaves as intended.

We are now closing this bug report.

If you just have questions about the resolution, then please update your bug report with that information so we can respond.

By justindelliott at Aug. 21, 2015, 7:02 p.m. (reply...)

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