I actually made some progress on this front. It became a bit more clear when I thought it over and made some considerations.

My setup is such that I have mirrored (via rsync) local repos of CentOS and Fedora. I then symlink the ISO’s within those repos to another place to make them easy for people to download the ISO. In this scenario I don’t have to do anything with the ISO to get the installation files need by PXE as they are available in the repo as I have syncd them.

With the above in mind, I should be able to accomplish the same for any Linux distro that I can mirror/rsync locally which nullifies the needs/goals of my OP.

I then thought about what OS’s this need actually applied to, and in my case it came down to Windows 10 and ESXi (various versions). I don’t mind downloading the ISO manually. What I was looking to accomplish was being able to take an iso or a batch of them in a dir and identify their; OS, version, build, revision and be able to use that to create a unique directory structure for said iso and then dumb the iso contents into the created dir structure for it.

The part I was hung up on was how to get the information I needed for this and that part, at least for Windows 10 (really any Windows ISO) and ESXi I have figured out at least as a proof of concept. I realized that the iso file name would not be the most reliable method of doing so and found ways unique to each OS family to identify the metadata I needed.

ESXi (having checked multiple Dell isos from 6.5-6.7):

I found that they had a /upgrade folder with 2 note worthy files in them. metadata.xml contains the version number and build number. profile.xml has the full name (so even if the file name of the iso is changed this should stay the same) from which I could extract things like the Dell revision and U1/U2 monikers used for Update 1 and Update 2, etc. It also has a tag for “creator” so I should be able to differentiate between Dell isos and non-dell isos.

To parse out the xml I found that xmllint provided by libxml2 would allow me to reliably pull this info from the xml files. Coincidentally, libxml2 was needed by wimlib anyhow (mentioned below for Windows).

Windows 10:

I installed wimlib and using the wiminfo command on the install.wim (combined with grep) I am able to pull information about the ISO as well as deduce if the ISO is a Windows ISO. I can get name, version, build number in this fashion.

I may expand this to Server 2016/2019 if they start releasing new iso builds “frequently” like they do with Windows 10, but older versions the iso hasnt changed for a long time and I have these setup already.

So basically it comes down to checking the ISO’s for the structure/files that match the OS family. In this case /upgrade/metadata.xml being ESXi and /sources/install.wim being Windows. Then I either parse out the XML for ESXi or using wiminfo pull the info from the wim file for Windows.

After that should be “easy”. Create a path using that info, check if it already exists, dump the iso contents, unmount, etc. I am also considering putting a fail safe kind of option in so that if the ISO doesnt match any conditions I am checking to “classify” it, I can prompt the user for manual input if they want to process the ISO allowing them to determine the path to dump it into.

Follow Up Question:

I hadnt considered it before, but generally speaking I assume it would be possible via the bash script to also update or add to the FOG’s iPXE menu by manipulating the “config” file that stores the menu? Or is there a database in between that would make that problematic?

I am not stuck on automating the menu creation but if its a relatively simple addition might as well add it.

Conclusion:

Once I get this written up into a moderately working fashion I intend to post it on my Github and would be happy to share the link back here.

Thanks

@numericOverflow You should research/test what happens if you run the update while the application is installed or not, running or not. Maybe it’s fine.

This is possible if you create your own background .png file. The settings are under Fog Settings-> Fog Configuration-> FOG Boot Settings-> IPXE XXXXX This will allow you to brand the FOG iPXE menu.

The background image file goes into /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe directory. Use the existing bg.png to get the image size geometry. If I remember correctly there is a maximum background file size supported by iPXE. Refer to the iPXE docs for help on picking custom colors and background images.

FOG is not a backup tool, its a block level image cloning solution. It captures and restores full partitions at the block level. FOG doesn’t have the ability to track changed disk blocks. If you want something like that look into Veeam Backup Agent (free).

As far as I know this has not been attempted before. I know FOG has been installed under docker containers. In theory it should work on freenas jail but I’m pretty sure the installer will not work as the developer intended. You my have to had configure a few things.

Hello guys, just to give feedback to you, everything is working now, but only multicast is not working correctly. The multicast starts normally and deploys the image between the 3 VM´s, but the transmission rate got too low, worse than using unicast mode for the 3 VMs, I’m trying to find some solution on the internet now for my problem, it’s probably some configuration for the internal network in VirtualBox. Anyone have any ideia or know about this ?

@robertkwild In addition to the link posted by @igorpa2 and in addition to this wiki article refered to by @Sebastian-Roth, there is a tool called updateIP.

updateIP was created as a easy to use tool for updating your FOG server’s IP settings after you’ve updated the OS’s IP. I would highly recommend it.

The quick answer is Yes to both.

The target system uses the PXE rom built into the computer to load the iPXE boot image. FOG only uses iPXE because its enhanced capabilities over the PXE boot ROM.

@cml said in [HELP]Using FOG with diferent VLAN´s:

@igorpa2

Just circling back to the original issue. Can you ping from a device on the 200 network to a device on the 172 network?

If not, what do you have as your layer 3 device?

Yes, i can ping from device in 200 network to and 172 network.
My layer 3 device is a pfSense Server controlling the network.

@CpServiceSPb basically it boils down to:

Fog is already written to install, configure, and enable tftp services using tftpd-hpa. Changing what’s doing tftp would require a lot of overhaul in terms of configuring and ensuring tftp is operational. Unless atftp has a significant advantage over tftp provided currently, there is no point in having us rework this portion of our installer.

@JJ-Fullmer I love your PS module, great work! I am still hammering away on things. and I will let you know if I run across anything else like this. I have been able to make a neat script in less than 200 lines that does a lot based off of a CSV input file.

@Horus As far as I know there is no general way to manipulate BIOS boot order. Some manufacturers provide tools for that but they are specific for that hardware and can’t be used on different ones.

You might just set the PCs to always PXE boot - we suggest to do this anyway. In case there is a task scheduled for a PC it will boot into the task. Otherwise it chainloads to boot from the local hard drive. Usually works for most systems.

FOG can clone them, I’m not sure how well it works in practice, though. I don’t think they can be resized automatically, so they’d be captured full size, however.

George,

Thanks for the ideas. I am going to try to build my own customized LIVECD version and see if I can get it to run. Will report back (will most likely take me a while!).

Thanks for the insight.

Colin

@x23piracy If you want to deal with the logistical elements of doing such a thing, I can’t really stop you. I think most would worry, however, that the money they send to a third party never making it to who they intended to receive it.

@FrancoDin said in Getting inventory from all PC.:

Ok, I was thinking maybe some thing about the dchp, when the PC are on. I guess there is no way.

What exactly do you mean by that?

If you can grab all the MAC addresses from your DHCP server then you could compile a list of hosts to import to your FOG server or just run a wake on lan utility to wake those PCs for you. You still need to do the modifications @Taspharel suggested to have the clients go straight into quick register. After that you could do another round for hardware inventory…

So I guess it is possible but needs some work to be done by you. We don’t have a ready set solution for you I am afraid.

@AndrewG78 while it is true that you can incorporate our product with yours, the only request (and I believe it is covered in the GPL as well) is that you credit our software and links to our software as being included.

This way people know for things related to FOG directly know to come to us for support needs.

@robertkwild To clarify, I’m not sure if that’s what’s causing it, just an idea to try out.

You can do a clean shutdown with shutdown -s -t 0

@WalterT said in Quick register of Host removes Graphic driver:

after installing a correct graphic driver, this problem is gone. Seems to be an issue of the Intel NUC mini PCs which use a graphic driver that is not contained in windows 10 basic installation.

I have seen this many times.

For FOG you can look into driver injection method or include the drivers as part of your golden/reference image.