@danieln I just realized that the persistent group plugin is not very well documented. It is covered a bit here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/8836/basic-persistent-groups-and-1-3-0rc16

The executive summary is

Add the Persistent group plugin Manually create a new host with a unique name that signifies it is a template host. Associate all of the snapins and what not that you want consistent for every host added to the group. Create a new Group that is exactly the same name as the template host. Now add hosts to this group (you can do this when you are registering the new computer with FOG too).

The settings will be copied over from the template host to the new host.

The workaround is just a patch file that needs to be replace on the FOG server. Replace this file BEFORE you install the plugin. If the plugin is installed before you add the patch file, uninstall the plugin then add it back.

We are discussing the discovered bug here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/15084/persistent-groups-snapins-added-to-host-but-not-deployed

The thread also has the temporary patch file link.

It works great !

Thanks a lot !

With apologies for the necropost, I’m looking at exactly this question at the moment. My thinking is you could possibly pair FOG with Relax-and-Recover or SystemImager for a complete backup/image/bare metal restore solution.

Looks like you would be able to add a Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) menu item to FOG’s menu for a full network-based restore, in the event of disaster. Since FOG can be used as a scheduler and general-purpose task executer, it is entirely possible to run one of these open source “live backup” solutions alongside FOG - i.e. on the same server.

I also note that ReaR can deal with UEFI/MD RAID situations, which seems to be a rare gift. 🙂

@george1421 Done. 👍

@boriquaboy115 FOG is an opensource project. AFAIK there is no physical location where The FOG Project exists. One of the developers might know for tax reasons if there is a specific mailing address.

As I said, The FOG Project is an opensource project with developers around the world. The senior developer that approves releases is based in the USA.

If you need this information for federal regulatory submission reasons, you may have a hard time getting opensource software approved for use.

@noithatgooccho There are different ways of getting what you are calling a “local cache”. Though the solutions have different restrictions or requirements.

Install a normal FOG master node in that location (no connection to the other server), register all your local hosts in that new server (it’s own database), create image definitions and manually copy the image files over to that server. Every time the image on the pre-existing FOG server is changed you need to manually copy the image over again. But local hosts can also capture an image to that new FOG server in that location.

Install a FOG storage node in that location - which needs to be able to constantly contact your pre-existing FOG master node to query information from the central database. The image files will be replicated from the pre-existing master node to the new storage node once (every time the image changes) - no manual copying needed. The hosts in that location can pull (deploy) an image from that new storage node (local cache) in unicast mode. But be aware that hosts in that location can only upload/capture an image to the pre-existing master node, not to the local storage node.

So it depends on what you want to achieve.

@seppim said in Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop live:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/eoan/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz

Thank you Ubuntu… Try this link: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/netboot/

Ubuntu 19.10 has been removed from existence so the previous links are now broken.

@sebastian-roth Hi Sebastian,

thank you!

Well, the 3 partitions are because of the Ubuntu software Raid.

I need the Raid to prevent system halt, because the server is not local monitoring. so no one will check if the HDD goes failed.

I finish my setup and try to capture … as long he copy 1:1 the HDD for the backup its fine

@sebastian-roth

I wish you and your familie a happy and healthy new year.

I wanted to say thank you for your time.

best regards

Enrico

@tom-elliott Thanks very much!! That fixed it!

I found the path to the password to that user from another post I’ll copy here in case someone else runs into this problem.

Find the database information in /var/www/html/fog/lib/fog/config.class.php - with FOG 1.5.9 the database user is called fogmaster instead of root that was used in earlier versions.

@matthew73 This is a unique condition. I can understand what is going on because we use NAC and VLAN switching on my campus. I can say that I have not seen this issue (anywhere) on my campus.

I think I understand what needs to happen. Basically iPXE needs to say something and then wait XX seconds for your NAC system to identify the hardware and to switch it to the right vlan. The network link light winking happens 2 times during a normal pxe booting. The first time is when the PXE turns over control of the network adapter to iPXE and then when iPXE turns over control of the network adapter to FOS Linux. We see a similar issue when the network switches are using standard spanning tree and not one of the fast protocols (RSTP,MSTP, port-fast).

The developers have created a specific group of iPXE boot loaders that have an embedded 10 second delay before iPXE tries to request an IP address. This gives STP and powersaver functions on the switch a chance to react before iPXE starts to talk. These files are in the 10secdelay folder. So to use these update dhcp option from ipxe.efi to 10secdelay/ipxe.efi This will call in the 10 second delay boot loader. See if that makes things better or not.

I’ve added some more steps that should avoid those errors.

I’ve updated the chown command in the wiki. The user fogproject is something that came about after this article was written. The user used to be just fog

@george1421

Hi George,

That’s exactly what im looking for! Thanks, this would work for me. When we get hardware on our departmend i connect always mostley one kind of machine, so that works for me.

thank you for your great help and quik respons. Im gonna build further with this in a few weeks, and now it is a lot easier.

gr

Paul

@kdmiller45 The fog-client software will do the activation for you if it’s all setup correctly.

@george1421 Great, thank you for the quick response.

@emreonder Please post the contents of the fog-client log file here.

Hostname changing on Linux systems is not as straight forward as it is on Windows. The fog-client will try to change different config files (code reference) though this might not always work.

On Linux you can usually take another route and set hostname via DHCP. Search the forums and the web in how to do this.

@emreonder I thought you have Windows DHCP server in your network. Well if the FOG server is actually providing IPs as the main DHCP server in your network you should not shutdown the server/service as clients would not get an IP via DHCP even when booting Windows.

If this is really true (you don’t have another DHCP server) then I would suggest you comment the line “next-server 10.1.11.4;” by putting a # at the start of this line, like this:

... # next-server 10.1.11.4; ...

Save the config and restart the server.

@emreonder said in Need to install Fog Server. Urgent remote support needed.:

nomater all the options i try with the Host Bios Exit Type or Host EFI Exit Type ( i guess i tried all the combinations) but never passes this step.

Ok the first thing we need to know is the gigabyte mobo in bios or uefi mode. Knowing that then you can focus on the right Host Exit type.

The default for bios exit type is SANBOOT. That works 95% of the time. For the UEFI exit type that is typically rEFInd.

So if you have a uefi type firmware and rEFInd hangs on exit there are a few things you can try with refind to make it work. The first thing I think I would have you do is update a few settings in the refind.conf file to see if adjust refind to locate your boot media.

@Oleg I hope you can read patch/diff information. Here are the changes you need to make to /var/www/html/fog/lib/pages/hostmanagementpage.class.php to add the “System Product” column to the host list output - this is for FOG 1.5.9 and would probably work in 1.5.8 just as well:

--- fogproject-master/packages/web/lib/pages/hostmanagementpage.class.php 2020-09-14 01:00:12.000000000 +0200 +++ /var/www/html/fog/lib/pages/hostmanagementpage.class.php 2020-12-19 17:03:24.225580767 +0100 @@ -175,7 +175,8 @@ _('Host'), _('Imaged'), _('Task'), - _('Assigned Image') + _('Assigned Image'), + _('System Product') ); $this->templates = array( '<i class="icon fa fa-question hand"></i>', @@ -223,7 +224,9 @@ _('Goto task list') ), '<small><a href="?node=image&sub=edit&id=${image_id}">' - . '${image_name}</a></small>' + . '${image_name}</a></small>', + '${inventory}' + ); unset($up, $down, $mc); $this->attributes = array( @@ -259,6 +262,9 @@ ), array( 'width' => 20 + ), + array( + 'width' => 120 ) ); /** @@ -281,6 +287,7 @@ 'image_id' => $Host->imageID, 'image_name' => $Host->imagename, 'pingstatus' => $Host->pingstatus, + 'inventory' => $Host->inventory->sysproduct, ); unset($Host); };

I suggest you keep a copy of this information somewhere so you can apply the changes whenever you update to a new version of FOG.

@sebastian-roth Yes resolved.