Digging around in a NetBoot-Install.dmg file created by NetRestore Helper, I found a nice little gem.
In Leopard, and perhaps earlier versions of Mac OS X, we're able to start a VNC server with the machine serial number as a password. This is particularly interesting for a managed network or lab environment.
As an example, I'm starting a VNC server in my NetBoot-Install image with the following shell script:
# Credit to Mike Bombich for this snippet
VNC="/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AppleVNCServer"
if [ -x "$VNC" ]; then
"$VNC" -noRegister -serialNumber &
fi
I'm then able to quickly connect with Cmd+K in the finder:
If you're scripting this, here's a quick way to snag the serial number. I do this before I bless a client machine to netboot, so I have the serial number to connect back up once it's in the NetRestore system.
system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | \
grep -i 'serial number' | \
perl -ple 's/.*:\s+(\w+).*?/$1/'
