Alrighty, so my work-arounds for this issue were to use a virtual drive of 28GB to make the original image, alternatively you can delete the 4th partition to make imaging completely compatible, but you lose the ability to do an OS reset in Windows.

If you move the partition to where it used to be in v1909, Windows can’t find it and that also loses the ability to reset, so if you have to move it, just delete it i guess…

another alternative if using clonezilla you can image and use gparted to first move the 4th partition to the end of the drive, then resize the 3rd partition, this seems to work fine without losing the option to reset, tested on 2 different machines, a Clevo Laptop and an HP All in One.

Otherwise typically just make sure the drive you are imaging to with FOG is generally larger than the source disk you imaged from and everything should be fine… generally speaking…

Well first let me say there is no definitive guide on this. To put it in the simplest terms, FOG doesn’t care about the target OS. FOG only copies disk blocks from here to there and back. Now if you bring the FOG Client into scope the FOG server can reach into the target OS to do things post deployment.

With that said, if you want to get to a single click deployment with FOG (regardless of the tareget OS at the moment) you can get pretty close.

There is a process I call “Load and Go” that allows system manufacturers load a target OS on a system with just a few menu selections. System rebuilders can use this process because once the target computer is imaged the FOG server will never see (typically) this system again. In this “Load and Go” work flow the system rebuilder pxe boots into the fog ipxe menu one time by using the F10/F12 boot menu and selecting pxe boot. That target computer will then pxe boot into the FOG iPXE Menu. From there the system rebuilder will pick “Deploy Image” and then selects the image name from the list of images loaded on the FOG server. From there the process is automated by a FOG Post install scripts that prepare the target system before the first boot of the OS. These post install scripts connect to the target computer’s disk and make any adjustments to the ini or cfg files needed to prep the system for the target OS’s self installers. In this Load and Go case you don’t register the target computer with the FOG server, because the fog server will never see or need to manage the target computer after imaging. The FOG client is not installed on the target system either since there is no need to manage the computer with FOG post deployment.

As I said the FOG Client isn’t installed on the target image nor is the target computer registered in FOG. This load and go process saves on these steps and time. Because the FOG client is not installed on the target computer (it technically could be) but not registered with the FOG server, the target OS will need to have all of its configurations set before the first boot of the target OS.

So lets say in the case of MS Windows, to use this process you will need to use an unattend.xml file. That file will contain everything needed to configure the system post OOBE/WinSetup. So your fog postinstall script will need to update the unattend.xml script to properly name the computer as well as connect the computer to AD. This is one way we deploy on my campus. I can use either the “Load and Go” method or the traditional register, image, deploy, manage route. It depends on the use of the target system on how we deploy the system.

I have some tutorial on post install scripts that go over the basics and the second link is a bit more step by step to set it up.
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/11126/using-fog-postinstall-scripts-for-windows-driver-injection-2017-ed

@Sebastian-Roth - Sorry for the delay - some other unrelated issues and then a pandemic to deal with! The fix works perfectly.

@george1421 said in Surface Pro 7:

@FOG-Summacom First lets get the FOS Linux kernel information. Second if needed there is an off-line method to update the kernel.

Hello George,

again, many thanks for your support.
I have entered the proxy data in the section Proxy Settings.
After some chances into our Firwall, know I can see the Kernel Updates. ^^
Before-Kernel-Switch.jpg

On next I klick on “Kernel - 5.6.18” and see following Screen:
After-Kernel-Switch.jpg

I don’t know if I have to install the latest version now.
Is it possible to do an online update via the backend of the software?

The test Surface is at this time no longer in the company.
I will do another test as soon as possible.

Best Regards and an fine Weekend,
Ralf

@a_bains make sure you are using the instructions that say for both bios and uefi systems. https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images/15

You do need to export the ISO to the files. The only way you can get the iso to boot is via memdisk in bios mode. UEFI doesn’t support memdisk booting.

@JJ-Fullmer said in Need Powershell help:

@Jamaal I believe that the wake on lan is enabled by default, so you don’t need to do anything to include it when creating the deploy task via the api.

Ok, gotcha.

Thank you very much for letting me know of this.

@Seb77 this might be helpful. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=CentOS_7#Continue_pre-config
The services are listed, and some UDP ports. This config does work.

@kgosset Well I’m a strong believer of you learn more from your mistakes than your successes, so I’ll only give you a push in a direction.

So lets take a hacker’s approach to this (the 1980s definition of a hacker not the 2000s blackhat).

I already gave you one clue. Point your browser to http://<fog_server_ip>/fog/service/ipxe/boot.php?mac=00:00:00:00:00:00 That will display the FOG iPXE menu as the FOG Project developer (wizards) have create. I figure they know a lot more than I do about the iPXE menu commands and structure. So copy the contents of that menu save it into a text file (save yourself some grief by using notepad++ and not ms windows notepad to edit this file). Save the file as a UNIX script file and name it something like custommenu.ipxe. The ipxe extension is important.

Now you can throw out a lot in this menu, but look for a :Menu line label. Delete the content below (but leave :Menu) down to :bootme (leave :bootme)

Now insert this into the deleted section (between :Menu and :bootme)

NOTE: this has NOT been tested. I only dreamed it up moments ago

menu item fog.mainmenu Return to the FOG iPXE menu item --gap menu --name dell-laptop Dell Laptops item fog.dell.7400 Dell Latitude 7400 item --gap menu --name dell-desktop Dell Desktops item fog.dell.3060 Dell Optiplex 3060 (mini) item --gap menu --name utilities item fog.mdt Boot into MDT choose --default fog.mainmenu --timeout 10000 target && goto ${target} :fog.mainmenu params param mac0 ${net0/mac} param arch ${arch} param platform ${platform} param product ${product} param manufacturer ${product} param ipxever ${version} param filename ${filename} param sysuuid ${uuid} chain http://${boot-url}/service/ipxe/boot.php##params boot || goto MENU :fog.dell.7400 boot || goto MENU :fog.dell.3060 boot || goto MENU :fog.mdt mdt.1903 kernel http://${fog-ip}/wimboot imgfetch --name BCD http://${fog-ip}/mdt/Boot/BCD BCD imgfetch --name boot.sdi http://${fog-ip}/mdt/Boot/boot.sdi boot.sdi imgfetch --name boot.wim http://${fog-ip}/mdt/Sources/Boot.wim boot.wim boot || goto MENU

Place this file on the FOG server in the /tftpboot directory.

Now you need to make a new iPXE menu entry to call this menu.

Menu Item: fog.CustomMenu
Description: Custom FOG Menu
Parameters:
chain tftp://${fog-ip}/custommenu.ipxe
boot || goto MENU

Now pxe boot a target computer. See if your menu works to go into and out of the custom menu. I’ll say this again, I did not test this menu design so there are probably bugs in it. But this is the framework. Once your menu works then we can work on filling out the menu items in your custom menu. I will show you how to get the details for the menu items.

ref:

Contents of /tftpboot/default.ipxe https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images https://ipxe.org/cmd/menu

The ( -5 ) is not part of the name. It is the display of the image number. You would use that number during manual registration of a host where you can assign the image to the host by the number.

@george1421 Many thanks that was along the lines that I was thinking but you’ve confirmed my thoughts are correct. I’ll go ahead now and set it up. Thanks again.

@brakcounty Over all the details about GRUB I lost sight on what this topic is all about… The USB method uses GRUB as boot loader because it can be installed into MBR on the USB to be used to boot legacy machines. As I said before, the alternative USB boot method is not part of the official FOG stuff and has not had enough attention to be fully integrated yet. Not because it’s impossible to do but because we have way to many things on the list.

Now that you use UEFI only in your setup you could skip GRUB altogether and directly boot using iPXE from the hard drive’s UEFI boot partition and should be able to use FOG exactly the way you would if it does PXE boot. For that you just grab one of the iPXE .efi binaries from your FOG server (e.g. /tftpboot/ipxe.efi) and but that on your disk’s EFI boot partition as \BOOT\EFI\BOOTX64.EFI (case doesn’t matter here as Windows will ignor it). When booting the iPXE binary will run its embedded script to get an IP from DHCP and chainload to the FOG boot menu.

@Sebastian-Roth You have to remember that memdisk only works for bios based computers. FOG does not ship a uefi compatible version of memdisk. Also with memdisk that 2.7GB iso image needs to be transferred and fit into memory on the target computer.

As I said if that IS the SUU disk it may not support netbooting. BUT on the PE620 if you use the lifecycle controller to update the system I know you can update the system from a USB stick with the files on it as well as link to an external repository. I just can’t remember at the moment if NFS is supported. I know ftp and CIFS is supported. If its NFS then the OP can just unpack the files in /images and access them via the lifecycle controller.

@Foglalt What would be interesting to know from a running windows OS, to look at the installed nvme hard drive. Were the computers that used that exact hard drive slow where the same model that used brand Y of the nvme drive OK? We seen this condition on a dell computer where they intermixed nvme drives on a single model.

OMG it’s working I spent like 5 hours searching for a solution and now it’s done by your answer.
you are the best bro thanks :)))))))))))))))))))

@george1421 Thanks!, Got it…
I will try your solutions it’s make sense.
🙂

@lelinh Hello and welcome to the FOG project forums. Have you got FOG installed yet? Which version? Anything we can help you with?

@fritoss007 I can give you a hackers approach at doing what you want with the registration process. FOG calls fog.man.reg to invoke the registration process. You can find the source of this program here: https://github.com/FOGProject/fos/blob/master/Buildroot/board/FOG/FOS/rootfs_overlay/bin/fog.man.reg

If you understand bash shell programming you can make modifications to this program to alter it registration. I will give you a hint to use notepad++ to edit this file because windows notepad add extra windows junk into the file that will cause error messages during execution.

So now you have this file how can you inject it into the FOS Linux booting process?

You can do the recommended method to unpack and repack the inits as Sebastian outlined. Take a bit of the hacker approach and use a FOG pre-startup script (i.e. post init script) to copy the fog.man.reg from the FOG server to the FOS Linux disk as FOS Linux boots. If you look at this tutorial: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14278/creating-custom-hostname-default-for-fog-man-reg in the section called fog.patch.customhostname you can see how to “patch” FOS Linux as it boots.

@fritoss007 This may help too, as I believe @Sebastian-Roth has made this script native to the github fogproject code, and can be run at any time:
https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/blob/master/utils/FOGiPXE/buildipxe.sh

Just one thing, i can boot only on uefi. It’s a long story…

@george1421 said in better web performance?:

… "I could just copy the 443 virtualhost as 444"but instead of creating a virtual host just setup https on your fog server. There is really 2 sides to this equation. First you have all of the fog inner workings of pxe booting and fog clients. Leave them on port 80. Second use your enterprise ssl certificates on the https port. (actually I’m going to be doing something similar in about a week to our fog server because more browsers are complaining about http sites.)

I’ve started outlining a basic (hack) configuration here to add ssl support to the FOG sever without much pain or messing with PXE or FOG Clients. https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14464/adding-https-support-to-fog-server-with-centos-7

So far its working.