1.6 upgrade: /etc/exports overwritten, captures stuck in /images/dev (SSH on non-standard port)
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The upgrade itself went smoothly, but two things broke afterward.
- The Kubuntu menu entry lost its NFS export. My Kubuntu entry boots the live ISO over NFS: the ISO is extracted to /srv/kubuntu, the kernel and initrd are served over HTTP, and the kernel line uses boot=casper netboot=nfs nfsroot=[fog server IP] :/srv/kubuntu. That needs its own line in /etc/exports:
/srv/kubuntu *(ro,sync,no_subtree_check,insecure,fsid=2)
The 1.6 installer rewrote /etc/exports (it saved my original as /etc/exports.<timestamp>) and kept only the /images and /images/dev exports, so the Kubuntu entry broke. Re-adding the line and running exportfs -ra fixed it. The menu entry itself carried over fine.
It would be nice if the installer preserved non-FOG lines in /etc/exports instead of replacing the file. Anyone else serving extra NFS shares from their FOG box will hit this on every update.
- Captures stuck in /images/dev. After the upgrade, captures finished but never moved out of /images/dev/<MAC>. The Apache error log showed:
ssh2_connect(): Unable to connect to [fog server IP] on port 22
1.6 now does the post-capture move over SSH, and my sshd runs on a non-standard port with key-only auth. Two fixes were needed:
FOGSSH.php reads a FOG_SSH_PORT setting, but it didn’t exist in my database, so I (Claude) inserted it:
sql
INSERT INTO globalSettings (settingKey, settingDesc, settingValue, settingCategory) VALUES ('FOG_SSH_PORT', 'SSH port FOG uses to reach storage nodes', 'custom port of ssh server', 'General Settings');FOG only authenticates with a password (auth_password), so I allowed password logins for the service account from the server itself only:
Match User fogproject Address [fog server IP],127.0.0.1 PasswordAuthentication yesSuggestions: expose FOG_SSH_PORT in FOG Settings by default, have the installer detect sshd’s port, and mention the SSH requirement in the upgrade notes, since FTP alone isn’t enough anymore.
Question: is SSH key authentication on the roadmap for FOG’s storage node connections? Right now FOGSSH.php only uses auth_password, so I had to carve out a password-login exception for fogproject on a box that’s otherwise key-only. Supporting ssh2_auth_pubkey_file, with a key pair the installer generates for the service account, would let servers keep password authentication disabled entirely. Is that possible today through a setting I’m missing, or would it need a code change?
Also - Claude the cheap $20 a month got all this sorted first try, I was all like, 1.6 bad. 1.5 good and it was all like here, do this, do that.

Thanks