It was mentioned in an earlier post:

@george1421 said in Wiping HD:

@lostitguy We you will need to make up your own fog ipxe menu to specifically call the wipe function.

I am not 100% sure I have the stanza right but it should look like this

Menu Item: fog.wipeit
Description: FOG builtin Disk Eraser Tool
Parameters:
kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/bzImage
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/init.xz
imagargs bzImage initrd=init.xz root=/dev/ram0 rw ramdisk_size=256000 ip=dhcp web=${fog-ip}/fog/ consoleblank=0 loglevel=4 mode=wipe wipemode=full
imgfetch init.xz
boot ||
goto MENU
Menu Show with: All Hosts

I was trying this today. As things likely changed since this was posted I found that I needed to change:

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/bzImage
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/init.xz

With :

kernel http://${fog-ip}/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage
initrd http://${fog-ip}/fog/service/ipxe/init.xz

Also there was a ram error so needed to increase size of the ramdisk to something larger such as 512000

I also omitted imgfetch init.xz and it still worked to my understandimg. Can someone please confirm that this line is redundant?

I get a database failed to update after the wipe. I am assuming this is because the wipe was initiated without being tasked?

Also I was surprised that the full wipe on the nvme SSD took less than a minute. Shouldn’t it take much long to write zeros or does FOG wipe perform some other type of erasure? If so what kind of erase method does FOG use for wipemode=full ?

Well mate, you did a wonderfull job 🙂 The only thing that afraid me is maintenance. By not using the fog install script, you have to write your own installer, which could be hard to maintain in the future, i think.

But to be clear, this is by far the best/cleanest work i’ve seen since a while (and i’ve seen a lot of them) :). I guess you did spent a lot of time on this. If i had found your work earlier, i would have, for sure, worked on it !

Ah man that’s exactly what I needed. Thanks so much sir!

We are preparing a lab with 44 MacBooks (Apple M4, 16 GB RAM).

Currently, we have not implemented any imaging solution yet. At the moment, we only use our Samba Active Directory domain for user authentication (LDAP/Kerberos) on the Macs.

All machines have the exact same hardware configuration, and we need a way to create a standardized macOS image and replicate it across all devices. This deployment process is performed once every semester, so we are looking for a reliable and repeatable solution.

We are evaluating the FOG Project as a possible solution, but we are unsure whether it supports cloning and deploying macOS images on Apple Silicon devices (M4).

We would like to ask:

Is FOG suitable for capturing and deploying macOS images on Apple Silicon Macs?
How does the cloning process for macOS work in this scenario?
If FOG is not recommended, what tools or best practices would you suggest for mass macOS deployment and domain integration with Samba AD?

Thank you for your guidance.

I didn’t really catch the described use case…
But anyway, if application stores something in the database, then the database need to be backed up, of course. Fully and incrementally also (separate logic).

If you use application that stores data in the same machine where it is installed, better would be to configure it to store data on the remote database, e.g on specific database server or some other way.
You can create network drive or other remote storage and point your database files there - if needed to be separate (for each PC).

This way you have all the data in the same place, and you can make backups of this server or drive more easilly.

Backuping entire PC with database in it - this can be done, but why?
It feels strange.

Example:
Lets say, employees in your company are working with important documents.
Do you really want to backup of entire PC (with os and applications and data), instead of storing those documents on secure and reliable remote storage?
Better solution is to simply make network location (local or in cloud) and let the users to store documents there - so the documents would not be lost if some pc dies.
If PC dies, then you simply replace the pc and deploy ready to use system image.

edit : It’s fixed. I forgot to add “option domain-name” and “option domain-name-servers” in dhcpd.conf

For the script, I think it must be simple to set FOG as DHCP server at startup if after 10 min no IP is given from a DHCP server then set server to static IP and start DHCP and DNS services.
And then reverse this at shutdown.
Maybe this can be done manually first.

edit : Here is the first script.
I have create files ending with .dhcp for conf for external DHCP/DNS and file ending with .static for conf for local DHCP/DNS.
It looks to work fine.

Have a good day

The problem was that I was running Debian Buster, so I first had to upgrade to Debian Bullseye so that the installer could install the new packages.

Then, I made a copy of the fogproject/ folder, deleted the folder to initiate a git clone
Next, I followed the tutorial and restarted the installer, which restored my old settings. The web interface is working, so I assume my clones will work as well.
Thank you.

So we installed Fog over 10 years ago and have just continued to update. Works awesome.

So going through some security things and we have a user for Fog Server that was set up with Domain AD. So this user seems to help process of joining AD and the naming…So couple things I was looking into.

1. Not wanting this user to have full Domain AD so wanted to fix that. I also tried to login with account on a regular computer to check password. Password is not working so 1. I am afraid to change anything because Fog is working amazing.

2. Want to know if I can fix now that all is setup and working well without causing issues. I see there is AD Default domain name on Fog server and also AD Default Password.

My readings and research seems to say don’t need as much access as maybe back 10 years ago but before I change anything would like to know if you have any recommendations or anyone have a similar situation?

Recommendations without messing up my Fog Server and process. I have user Disabled unless I am doing install/image. Thanks and look forward to hear from others.

I’ve already declarations set for each host in my dhcpd.conf file in terms if MAC to IP and so adding another field of filename “some boot loader file” won’t be impossible.

Thanks you for this exercise as I’ve learned some very important things here.

Old fog server version 1.5.10.1660
new fog server version 1.5.10.1667

This server is the master server for 25 remote sites each having their own storage node. We installed the fog client on the remote hosts to use the DNS name for the server dc-fog-el. Currently it is in use for the old server but I would like to repurpose it for the new one that has a different IP address. Reading the wiki page for Migrating fog and for Maintain Control Of Hosts When Building New Server I have a question about this process. When migrating the SSL folder from /opt/fog/snapins, it contains files that have the old servers IP address. The wiki says to transfer the SSL folder to the new server and re-install fog. Even though the two servers have different IPs and the fog client is using the domain name for the old server, will the new server maintain control of the existing hosts during this process if I migrate the domain name to the new server?

My goal in all of this is to prevent a lot of headache and work for our tech support team to have to reinstall the fog client on over hundreds of computers. I am working on migrating the database over to the new server. I know there were some config files for mysql/mariadb and php I needed to change and increase the memory and connection limit sizes.

Any help with understanding this migration would be much appreciated!

I need help to understand the storage group function.
I would like to have :

• A main server with GUI and all image storage
• A storage group named SALLES-1
• A Master storage node of the group SALLES-1
• An image linked to storage group SALLES-1

In order to like in this doc :

I want to muticast in group SALLES-1. But I would like to have the image on the Main, in order to sync it with an other Master storage of an other storage group (SALLES-2 for example)

Is it possible ?

Thanks for your help

Haven’t purchased the new models yet.

Was hoping to confirm they’re compatible with FOG first, so thought I’d reach out and ask around.

Thank you!

is there a possibility of automatic separation of locations,

I’m not sure I fully understand the question, but if you are asking can it automatically pick which location to select based on the IP address of the computer being registered. The quick answer is no, FOG doesn’t currently have that capabilities.

The bit longer answer is it could if you can be a little creative and can do a little linux bash script programming. In a nutshell, you can customize the bash script that is setup for full registration of computers. The basics of what needs to be done is covered in this tutorial: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14278/creating-custom-hostname-default-for-fog-man-reg

The IP address bit can come from this script: https://forums.fogproject.org/post/69725 This post is for getting the IP address to be used in a FOG postdownload script. But the concept will be the same for the fog.man.reg script.

I believe the best way to learn is to do, so i am going to go shopping for an SSD (and perhaps some RAM to be safe). Once I have everything in place, I am going to do a test run on our machines as well as those of an associate just to see what happens when the network changes. Following this, I will check back with you if you don’t mind to go through the results.

I am also new here but I believe I can take a crack at your image.
Snapins I feel are great, they automatically install after your machine is imaged. The other tool you would want to consider here are the “Groups” feature. While this isn’t a traditional group where new hosts inherit group settings, its a good way to apply settings on mass.

Here is my basic setup:
I have 2 images and 6 groups. I then onboard all of the client machines / hosts and assign them to the appropriate group. In the group setup, I then choose the correct image and snapins for that group. This applies these settings to all associated hosts (ie. All current hosts that are associated with this groups now have the same settings.)
The only downside currently is if you need to assign a new host machine to this group, you need to re-apply the image and snapin settings for the group to apply it appropriately to this machine.

Let me know if this helps and if there is anyone more experienced out there feel free to tell me if I am wrong.

could do it :