In the next section of videos, we're going to discuss using a program called Bootstrappers to get your
computer from an out of state to a production state with as little human interaction as possible.
Now, normally, when you take a computer out of the box and you let it boot up, the Apple setup assistance
starts and the first thing it asks you to do is to create a user account, which then becomes an administrator
account.
Now, if you don't want your end users to become administrators, then you're basically forced to have
someone from your technical team set up the computer.
Now, you may not want your end users to set up their computers, but if you follow this bootstrap or
procedure, then you actually could have end users set up their own computer to start the bootstrap
procedure.
You need to boot your computer into recovery mode.
Now, we're in recovery mode and I'm going to go ahead and run this utility and you're going to see
that we are Bhoot from the recovery partition.
And then we also have a partition on the machine called Macintosh Hard Drive.
Now, if we go into utilities and we change that Macintosh hard drive volume, then you're going to
see that there are no user accounts on this machine and that's because this computer hasn't been run
in the setup assistant hasn't been run yet.
So, again, this computer is in and out of state.
So to start bootstrap or we're going to go ahead and run in HDI util and then attach and then the path
to our bootstrap volume.
And then once it mounts, we're going to go ahead and run the run command off of our bootstrap volume.
And how we get to the food strapper menu, so next we're going to choose the volume that the computer
is going to boot from and in our case, that is Macintosh hard drive next, that's going to run a series
of scripts and packages.
And in order we specify and in our case, the first one is to enter a computer name.
So we're going to go ahead and enter the computer name for this machine and it's going to go ahead and
rename the computer.
And then after that, it's going to run some packages.
So it's installing monkey tools and Monkey Kickstart, which is a which basically puts a monkey into
bootstrap mode, which we'll cover.
And then it's going to run a package to get the setup assistant and then it's going to install a package
to create an administrator account with a known password.
And now it's running a script that's going to allow us to choose what monkey manifests we want to use.
And you can see that there's one based off of a serial number or hostname site default and then one
called Luby or at a box experience.
And we're going to go ahead and choose that one.
And then after that, it's running another script that's going to suppress the diagnostics dialogue
when a user logs in for the first time and it wants to know now if we want to restart or shut down now,
we could shut down and ship this computer somewhere.
And when it boots up, it's going to just it'll already be named.
And then monkey will do whatever work it needs or we can go ahead and restart it, which I'm going to
do, and then the computer will restart and start configuring itself.
So when you take a computer out of the box and you set it up with the setup assistant, you remember
that the Apple remote desktop agent's not set, SSA isn't set.
If you have some other management system, no agent is installed.
So basically what we've done is following a simple procedure with very little user input and without
needing an administrator account or password.
What we've effectively done is taken the computer out of the box and within a couple of minutes the
computer will ultimately be set up by monkey with the correct name, correct.
Active Directory organization unit that will get the right printer will be configured for remote management.
It's got the right manifest.
The monkey is going to do whatever we want to this computer that we need.
All right, so now that the computers boot up, you can see that monkey is running now.
It's in a mode called bootstrap mode.
And what bootstrap mode basically means is, is that monkey is going to run, it's going to finish and
it's going to run again and it's going to keep running until there's no more work for it to do.
And so what that means is monkey will even run again after a reboot instantly.
So right now, it's installing some packages and some mobile config profiles and scripts.
And if any of these are set to reboot the computer, which I've actually made the join domain package
do, then Monkey will go ahead and reboot.
And then monkey after the reboot is going to continue running again.
And like I said, it will just keep on running and running until there's no more work for it to do.
And then the computer will be in a production stage.
All right.
So I'm going to just speed this up so we can see the process.
All right, so as you can see, Monkey is finished installing stuff, but it was given a command to
reboot, which that it's going to do now.
And then after it comes back up from the reboot, you'll see monkeys start running again.
All right, so as you can see, the computers back up and monkeys started again and it's found no additional
work to do, so now we have the ability to log in.
And right now our computer is in a production state.
All right, so as you can see, when we logged in, we went directly to the desktop, we weren't asked
any of the questions that you normally get asked when you log into a system for the first time.
And so I want to point out a couple of things.
And that is, first of all, if we go to sharing, you can see that our computer name is named how we
set it in Bootstrap.
Our remote log in is turned on in remote management or also turned on.
So already our computer is manageable, not to mention the fact that that monkey has been installed
and we have a manifest.
So in addition, a user account, an administrator user account has been set up with a password that
the person that set the computer up doesn't even know.
And it was joined to our domain, which is how we were able to log in with our network account and when
we go to profiles.
You can see that we have a bunch of profiles, including our Velzy preferences or active directory,
joined us to the right organizational unit, and there's some new mobile config profiles here that we
haven't worked with yet.
And we have one to skip the remaining questions that Mojave asked you when you log in for the first
time like like light or dark appearance, privacy and iCloud set up.
And then there's also another mobile config profile that skips a firewall question, which we'll get
to in the next section.
Now, we also have gotten our printer installed, and if we go to the applications menu, you'll see
that we have Velzy installed in Velshi only and that was just for demonstration purposes.
If we launch Velzy, you'll see that we're not going to get any the first run questions because our
preference is packages were applied.
And then if we go to monkey and let Monkey run, then you'll see that if we go to software, we have
some optional software to install.
So as you can see, bootstrappers with monkey is pretty powerful that a non admin user can go ahead
and set up a machine, name it, and effectively it will join the domain, install whatever software
that you want or as little as you want.
And you could have your end users install whatever software they want.
Or you could push out all the software that you want to them automatically.
Getting a computer from out of the box to production just takes a few minutes and very little user interaction.
And in the next section, I'm going to teach you how to install your own bootstrap or environment.