runAt loginwindow best practice

[greatkemo]

Hi Team,

I appreciate that this feature is still in BETA; is there a best practice or optimal configuration for it?

I am testing it to replace our existing enrollment workflow for computer labs and shared Macs.

Currently, JSM only launches about 4 out of 10 times; here’s what I have:

• PreStage is set to Auto Advance, so ignore all setup assistance prompts.
• JSM 1.1 is hosted on a web server, and a manifest file is created and uploaded to Jamf Pro (on-prem) and added to the prestage.
• A hidden account is created upon enrollment as the machines will be joined to the domain and will need a local account to enable the bootstrap token.
• Only the JSM Config Profile is selected in the prestage.

When the machine powers on after a fresh restore, it performs the auto advance, then reaches the login window, and in more than half the cases, it just stops there.

Rebooting resolves the issue and the device proceeds with JSM to start the workflow.

I’ve noticed that in most cases where a reboot is necessary, once JSM runs, it does so without the custom logo. The logo works fine if JSM starts up by itself. The logo was uploaded to Jamf Cloud using Policy > Self Service, just like the icons for Installomator.

Best,
Kamal

[scriptingosx]

Thank you for the report, I really appreciate it.

At this point in time, all I can do is confirm your experiences. I believe there is a weird race condition during the launch of Login Window and Setup Manager, but no real conclusion on how to resolve or even "improve the odds." Some deployments don't seem to experience it at all, while in some deployments it can be as bad as ~50% failure.

We are planning some testing with 1.2 beta and will keep you updated.

[greatkemo]

Hi Armin,

So when I read this in the documentation "When the icon source string starts with http or https, Setup Manager will attempt to download a file from that URL and interpret it as an image file. It will show a spinning progress view while downloading." I was hopeful that possibly a network interruption was causing the the download to fail and therefore the issue to appear, and maybe if I changed to using name: with AppIcon of NSComputer, removing the need for the process to download anything it would mitigate it.

Unfortunately it did not. However, it did the resolve the issue of the missing icon, and now the an icon shows after the reboot.

with Custom icon:

With name:NSComputer:

FWIW, the custom icon displays without issue when JSM launches without reboot, and the same is true in normal deployment where runAt is set to enrollment.

I will keep testing other scenarios and troubleshoot, and if I find anything else, I will report it here.

Best,
Kamal

[Uggbert]

Hi

Using Beta 1.2 release!

Just adding my 2 cents to this issue. As above if I set to auto advance and skip all setup assistant options, it will revert to a grey screen with login prompt. However if I reboot the device when it reaches the login window this time, Setup Manager triggers as expected.

I noticed this same behaviour when I was trying to get user notifications to run at the login window using another process. Which lead me to this: swiftDialog/swiftDialog#442

Not sure if its helpful but the logic used by swift to resolve the issue may help.

[thad-kraus]

Seeing the same issue in my enviroment. No JC install and no JC profiles, Grey screen and a reboot kicks off the loginwindow JSM as expected...

Running JSM 1.1 and MacOS 15.3.1

[scriptingosx]

please test running with login window with v1.2, also see this discussion

#96