@brakcounty said in Updating FOG and retaining settings:
so i went ahead and ran the update and broke mysql and mariadb beyond repair. apt update --fix-broken wasnt working. so i backed up my images, and reinstalled ubuntu server and fog 1.5.5 fresh. i luckily had a .sql backup file i exported two days ago and was able to import it via web ui successfully. i also mounted my RAID array to “/images” and its working fine. i will hold off on updating FOG to 1.5.7. Thanks for the input!
Sorry to hear you went through this. I thought my warning a day ago was clear enough but obviously it wasn’t.
There was no need to re-install Ubuntu as the database was still existing in a different directory (/var/lib/mysql-5.7). I suppose it’s all gone now. On the other hand it’s good to know that you got things up and running again using the sql backup file. But it would have saved you a lot of work and trouble if you’d waited for my instructions.
It’s fairly easy to upgrade to 1.5.7 and not break things but I needed to do a test on my end to make sure this is really working as I think it is before I would tell you. When you start the 1.5.7 installer you get to a point where it asks this question:
*** Detected a potential need to reinstall apache and php files.
*** This will remove the /etc/php* and /etc/apache2* directories
*** and remove/purge the apache and php files from this system.
*** If you're okay with this please type Y, anything else will
*** continue the installation, but may mean you will need to
*** remove the files later and make proper changes as
*** necessary. (Y/N):
If you upgrade from 1.5.5 or 1.5.6 you are save to say No (n) here! In this case you upgrade to 1.5.7 without running into the database issue!
ESXi 6.7u2
NOTE: This guidance only supports network booting of the uefi installer for ESXi. The reason for this is the fog project does not ship iPXE kernels that support the comboot function. If you want to boot your ESXi server in legacy mode you will need to compile your own specific version of undionly.kpxe to add in the IMG_COMBOOT.
First we’ll create the required directories:
mkdir -p /images/os/esxi/6.7u2
Now we’ll mount the ESXi installer iso over the loop directory. Then we’ll copy the contents of the DVD to the directory we built above.
mount -o loop -t iso9660 /{full path where you have the iso stored}/VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0.update02-13006603.x86_64.iso /mnt/loop
cp -R /mnt/loop/* /images/os/esxi/6.7u2
umount /mnt/loop
Edit the boot configuration file to use NFS to access all of ESXi’s files.
# remove forward slashes from the config file
sed -i 's/\///g' /images/os/esxi/6.7u2/efi/boot/boot.cfg
Now we need to edit the/images/os/esxi/6.7u2/efi/boot/boot.cfg file to insert or modify the prefix parameter. Insert/modify the following line just below the title parameter. Also, be sure to replace {fog_server_ip} (exactly including the curly braces) with the actual IP address of your fog server. Your prefix line should look similar to this:
prefix=nfs://192.168.1.20:/images/os/esxi/6.7u2
The last bit of magic we need to do is setup a new FOG iPXE boot menu entry for this OS.
In the fog WebGUI go to FOG Configuration->iPXE New Menu Entry
Set the following fields
Menu Item: os.esxi67u2
Description: ESXi 6.7u2 Installer
Parameters:
kernel nfs://${fog-ip}:/images/os/esxi/6.7u2/efi/boot/bootx64.efi -c nfs://${fog-ip}:/images/os/esxi/6.7u2/efi/boot/boot.cfg
boot || goto MENU
Menu Show with: All Hosts
That’s it, just pxe boot your target system and pick ESXi 6.7u2 Installer from the FOG iPXE boot menu.
If for some reason you can not use NFS to pxe boot into the ESXi installer you can use tftp or http. If you want to use tftp extract the ESXi install files to /tftpboot/os/esxi/6.7u2. Then update the nfs:// protocols to tftp:// Be sure to remove the ':/images' after the host name or you will have errors. (i.e. kernel nfs://${fog-ip}:/images/os/esxi would become kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/os/esxi)
