@Acuity From what I know about this and read between the lines I think this is caused by the Dell Optiplex AIO 5270’s UEFI firmware not being able to find EFI boot loaders by itself. We had other people report this kind of thing and I thought about adding a feature to FOG that would also save a copy of the EFI boot entry with the image and also deploy it to new machines (forum topic). While it seems to be a vital thing to do on first sight I stepped back from the idea because we don’t have many reports on this being an issue at all (1, 2). While on the other hand we have reports on UEFI firmware creating multiple boot entries (new one on every deploy I guess) or somehow messing with the entries by themselves (1, 2) Because of that I decided to better not mess with the EFI boot loader entries as it could cause trouble on systems we don’t know well enough (like dual boot and such).

Nevertheless you can try to use efibootmgr tool in post deploy scripts to set the boot entry for you. Search the forums for those two things and if you need assistance just let us know.

@rocksteve69 Unfortunately I’m unsure what else to try at the moment.

@george1421 had a look at our Dell 5300 device and it doesn’t have the Thunderbolt port. Although we have resolved the issue another way, I may consider looking at getting the rest of the devices optioned with Thunderbolt ports.

Thanks!

Derek

@george1421 I found that my previous image which I used on Elitebook g5s is having diffrent ethernet driver, its issue with image. I test it on diffrent computer its installed correct. Please disregard my question.

@Foglalt said in ASRock B360M Pro4 imaging issue:

As for the fog versions. I would upgrade it when i will have time for it.

At this time I’m only suggesting that you update the FOS Linux kernels in /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe directory. There are two files there bzImage and bzImage32 (watch the case). Replace them with 4.12.3 versions from here: https://fogproject.org/kernels/

Download them, rename them to bzImage and bzImage32 respectively and then move them to the fog server in the path above. Be sure to rename the original files just in case you need them later. Once you are on at least 4.12 then the new(ish) hardware with the I219 network adapters (very common nowadays) will be supported.

@Deps I would recommend if your setup is not exactly the same as the OP in this thread that you open a new thread.

We will need more information on what type of computer Mfg and Model, what version of FOG are you using and what FOS Linux kernel are you running.

From your description, it sounds like the target computer is not registering correctly or the network adapter’s MAC address is changing between registration and the next reboot.

If you are seeing bzImage being transferred you can remove iPXE out of the problem. The default you should have for uefi is ipxe.efi.

Now you should focus on the FOS Linux engine (bzImage). What version is the FOS Linux kernel? I know I have a Dell 7400 2 in 1 with a Dell usb c dongle (as well as a WD15/WD19 docks) that boot into FOS Linux and pick up a dhcp address.

I find it strange that it finds the network adapter, and sees the link come up but can’t communicate over that link. Lets start with what version of kernel are you using? The next part is to schedule a new capture/deploy task but tick the debug check box before you schedule the task. Then pxe boot the target computer that will but the target computer in debug mode so we can key in some additional commands.

@paat So just to be clear, you have a Dell branded usbc cable?

I have a dell branded usb c ethernet adapter on a 7400 and I can pxe boot into the fog compatibility menu (I don’t want to image my workstation at the moment) and ping devices. So I know the network adapter works. Also when we image we typically use the WD15 dock (the WD19 docks are flaky some times with pxe booting). That way we charge the laptop as well as image at the same time.

This is the dell usbc dongle we are using: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-adapter-usb-c-to-ethernet-pxe-boot/apd/470-abnd/pc-accessories

Also what version of FOG are you using as well as what FOS Linux kernel version do you have?

@astrugatch Check gut George’s great tutorial here: https://forums.fogproject.org/post/69605

Make sure you use the “Part 2b” stuff for UEFI.

@michaeloberg Interesting workaround you cam up with! Using dnsmasq for legacy BIOS machines (undionly.kpxe) and Windows DHCP for UEFI ones (ipxe.efi). While it seems to work properly I am fairly sure this will be failing one or the other time because both send out PXE boot information and this is known to cause trouble.

As George said, would be good to get the packet dump (pcap) to understand what’s going on. For that you’d disable option 66 & 67 on your Windows DHCP, install tcpdump on your FOG server and capture the packets while PXE booting the legacy BIOS host first and when it waits at the iPXE menu try booting the UEFI machine too and stop the packet dump just after that ran into the error.

@elibirau Just so you are aware, this is not a hardware forum by any means. There are way better places to post this kind of questions with people around knowing way more about hardware than we do! This forum is about the FOG project… 🙂

@georgeyates Please realize that FOG 0.32 is 8 years old already. I would not expect it to run on any current disk hardware, understand gpt disk, uefi, nvme, any current network adapters, Windows 10 disk structure. If you have it working now with the 3.3.3 linux kernel, great job.

@Quazz said in HP Probook x360 11 G1 EE Unable to Image:

This particular model seems to be bad news in Linux environments in general.
People having trouble installing Linux on it, getting it to boot, etc

To me this sounds pretty clear. We might still try to help getting this fixed but it won’t be easy I suppose. It’s not something FOG is doing wrong but HP decided to release a device that seems to be Linux unfriendly.

What I’d suggest is you download different kinds of Linux live CD ISOs and try booting those one after the other to see if any is able to boot up and run this hardware without issue. Ubuntu Live, Knoppix, Kanotix, CentOS live, openSUSE, SystemRescueCD, …

@InfoOverload said in iPXE/tftp error - Extra chars in the RRQ:

working through some of the troubleshooting/ I decided to look at the dhcpd.conf a little closer
This is what I had - “broken”

Great you figured this out! Not something I’d know from the top of my head and believe me I have done very extensive debugging and use of the Linux DHCP server.

The difference between option bootfile-name and filename as far as I understand it, is that the later actually puts the filename into the answer body vs. the other one adds it as a option later in the DHCP packet. Take a look at the DHCP packets in wireshark and you’ll understand what I mean.

Why some NICs handle the DHCP option properly while other do not - I don’t know. It would be interesting to see if the DHCP server actually sends those malformed names or if it’s the NICs miss-reading it. I suppose it’s some kind of missing “end of string” character that makes some NICs read beyond the actual filename in the DHCP option… just guessing here.

Upload a PCAP and we can figure this out. 🙂

Solved. After eliminating one item after another, and initially only looking at the NIC, I went ahead and removed the DMS card. Wouldn’t you know it, no longer the rEFInd error and they went on to image. Thanks for everyone’s suggestions. This goes to show that some errors are not really related to what they appear to. 40 + machines saved from surplus.

@gazzer82 You should be able to use the efibootmgr tool if the machine is properly booting in UEFI mode. Please describe in more detail how you boot from USB. One time you say pxelinux (which is really old and not used by FOG since years) and then you say rEFInd…

If you boot up to a FOS debug shell run efibootmgr, take a picture of the output and post here.

@Shad0wguy said in HP Elitebook g6 slow to image:

where the first image will deploy without issue, but then subsequent deployments hang.

Can you clarify what “subsequent deployments” mean? Is that to the same device you are deploying again, or are you deploying to a different device and it hangs?

Is the hang with image push from fog or WinSetup/OOBE provisioning of the device?

If it is a different device, is there anything that is being shared between the two devices? What happens if you reboot the fog server when the subsequent devices hang?

What version of FOG are you using?

thank you 🙂

@sysengine1125 What is serving DHCP in your network? A Windows Server? Which version?

@weidongyan said in How to make fog server using my new storage pool:

The storage pool that I created has been mounted.

To which path is it mounted?? As well post the output of the commands George requested!