Hi All,

Just looping back to this hoping that someone can suggest a solution on how to fix the FOS so that what is happening (as shown in my prior postings) doesn’t happen to other people. Presently I’m resolving this by pulling the two network cards out so that only one network card is available while the deployment OR capturing is done. Otherwise the mac address changes to one of the other cards installed on the box. I’ve also tried with multiple network cards thinking MAYBE it has something to do with the network cards I’m installing… Sadly no solution as of yet.

Just adding my case here in case it helps someone else with the same error.

I’m running FOG 1.5.10 on RHEL 9.5. In my case the problem was not iPXE, kernels or init.xz, but a broken NFS setup on the FOG server.

When I tried to rerun installfog.sh, it always failed at “Starting NFS server” with a systemd dependency error. Checking systemctl list-dependencies --failed nfs-server.service showed that one dependency was a failed mount coming from /etc/fstab. It was an old ISO mount pointing to a path that no longer existed.

Because that mount failed, nfs-server could not start, and FOS Linux failed to mount its root filesystem over NFS, causing the kernel panic on UEFI clients.

After removing the invalid mount from /etc/fstab, running systemctl daemon-reload, fixing NFS exports and starting nfs-server, I was able to complete installfog.sh and UEFI PXE boot started working again.

@Hojjati I’ve found a solution for this issue that worked for me.
You need to manually edit the Windows hosts file at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and add an entry with your FOG server’s IP address followed by the name “fogserver”.

This is necessary because SmartInstaller.exe performs a pinning process during installation, if you notice the installer hangs or fails exactly at that pinning stage, it is definitely due to this resolution issue.

Adding the entry ensures the installer recognizes the server and can download the certificate properly.

@nicolas-moraes I managed to solve it and in my case it was not a FOG or network issue. I verified that DHCP was working correctly (confirmed with tcpdump), options 66/67 were unchanged, TFTP was running, and the FOG web/ipxe boot.php were reachable.

The key test was that when the client stayed at “Start PXE over IPv4”, the FOG server was not receiving any DHCP or TFTP requests at all, which pointed to a client-side problem. Even though Secure Boot and Fast Boot were already disabled, the issue was caused by the BIOS state.

After restoring BIOS defaults on the HP laptop and re-enabling PXE IPv4 boot, everything started working again. It seems some UEFI/PXE flags were stuck, and resetting the BIOS fixed it.