@brakcounty It contains all of the exportable items and more (like deployment history, inventory, snapin groups, and other things I can’t remember without looking). The fog database is everything except the raw image data stored in /images. With the metadata (mysql database) and the raw image files in /images you can rebuild your fog server from a fresh install.

@george1421 I confirm that exist powershell template :D:D:D .

@ayashkam You can do it, The automated snapin execution is basic for me, my images are living entities and my software requirements continously changes (Education environment with more than 250 different sites and more than 15.500 computers).

I have my image’s configured to install fogclient and start it on the first boot, you can do it with the unattended deployment procedures (setupcomplete.cmd) for example if you sysprep the images or use other ways like scheduling it at start up.

I download the installer with the postdownloadscript to ensure that the current version is installed. Take care because at the moment that you run the service the snapins start to be executed, you can have problems with another installations or the configuration can be disrupted by needed reboots. You know your systems and must take the cautions needed.

@sudburr Just so you’re aware - we are still working on the 1.5.x version of FOG. Long term aim is to finish that, merge all the things into the 1.6 branch (Tom does this every now and then with all the fixes we add in 1.5.x) but we’ll most certainly release one or two more 1.5.x versions before we call it “finished”.

What version of FOG?

The 500 error is from apache, you might want to inspect the apache error logs in /var/logs.

If you had ubuntu installed, I might think that ubuntu has applied a patch and secured the database, but you are using fedora so that’s probably not the issue. But again, check the apache error logs first.

@mike-S Your simple question has a lot of content behind it.

Fog does have a function to install applications or run programs on the target computer. Fog doesn’t care about applications or customization. That is up to the IT Tech to properly configure. Must windows application support MSI installation. This MSI installations support command line options to configure the application. Other applications (like adobe acrobat reader) have a customization program that creates a profile ini file that is used during application installation to configure the applications. MS Office has a similar configuration tool.

So can FOG deploy applications, yes. Can FOG deploy application customizations, yes (as long as the application has been preconfigured). Can FOG customize applications, No.

If you would have mentioned the application there may be instructions online about how to configure. If you want to google yourself, search for “Unattended install” and your application name.

You’re trying to pull something from the images folder over https, but https isn’t configured to serve that location.

Think more along the lines of /var/www/fog

@Junkhacker
Checking it out!

We had to move our workspace around the office…

Edit: We got sick interns, colleges on vacations 😞 having a hard time scraping time together.

@Chuck2000 Ok that’s probably the best solution especially with the newer hardware that is coming out. But some like to hold onto the old versions of fog for some reason. I guess if it isn’t broke don’t fix it.

@alexsanderngaongo Try connecting a dumb mini switch between that machine und your building switch. Quite often this makes a difference. From there we can start losging into what’s causing this.

@Derek-Newbold Good to know that php-fpm is installed and running! (Speaking of running processes, what does CPU and RAM usage look like (for processes such as apache, mysql, php-fpm, etc) when you try to do something that takes a long time for you?)

Odd that you’re experiencing performance issues despite this. Though number of clients could contribute to this.

If you have a bunch of hosts/clients, it’s also possible your database has grown quite a bit over time which can slow things down a bit.

@dangquan091

Sysprep your windows before capturing.

*Open CMD (As Administrator)
*Enter command: cd C:\Windows\System32\drivers
*Enter command: sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown

System will shutdown. DO NOT BOOT INTO WINDOWS! capture image!

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/sysprep-command-line-options

@Sebastian-Roth Thank you so much! we will work on it 🙂 i will report back asap.

There were some issues with NVME drives in the past that have since been resolved. I do recommend updating to the latest version for best results.

If it’s just SATA SSDs then it will function just as if it’s a spinning disk in how it’s treated in terms of image capture and deployment.

@johnny_verdane

Defogging: FOG does modify iPXE binaries by adding a boot script embedded into iPXE. That script is here: https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/blob/master/src/ipxe/src/ipxescript Its used to chain to default.ipxe on the tftp server. If you look in that script on the fog server that is how it gets to boot.php. With iPXE boot loader you can transfer files over tftp, http(s), nfs with the way FOG has it compiled. FOG uses the http protocol to load FOS Linux because http is faster than tftp and is routable across subnets. But you don’t need http or apache to boot your only custom linux, tftp will work just fine. You could use the rom-o-matic site to build your custom iPXE binaries and not even need to setup that build environment for iPXE https://rom-o-matic.eu/ Just understand that you can use the FOG iPXE binaries too, you just need to add your iPXE code to default.ipxe in the tftpboot directory of your tftp server. Its just one less thing to mess with.

Security: One of the advantages of the buildroot approach is that since your OS will run out of memory its a bit stateless. If the running environment becomes compromised, when you stop the system or reboot the compromise will not be saved since everything runs out of RAM there is no persistence. Plus since the initrd is packed you can’t simply drop a file in its boot media. The bad guy would have to unpack the inits, make the modification and then repack the inits. While its not hard to do, its not easy either.

Anyway, it sounds like you have a fun and challenging project. I wish you the best.

@Derek-Newbold ok here goes…

firewall: yes those ports are correct. With just a comment. Remember that a FTP session is a two way street. Port 21 is used as the command channel and the remote site will connect back to the master fog server over port 20. FTP is a well known protocol so your firewall guys should already know this.

Location plugin. I was going to say nope, we don’t have anything… but then I look on the FOG Project wiki page: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Location_Plugin

What fog has issues with is changing the imaging LAN ip address after FOG is installed. As far as FOG is concerned that second interface is invisible. So its address can be assigned by dhcp, there or not it doesn’t matter as long as when its connected the fog server can reach the internet to download any packages needed from the host OS’ repo. Now don’t get me wrong you “can” change the fog server’s IP address after fog is installed but there are a number of places you need to change and then rerun the installer to fix the rest.

Well the answer isn’t clean no matter which route you take. You have to remember that FOG doesn’t really care about user data or host OS. FOG (FOS Linux) is linux based so it really can’t step into the MS Windows world other than copying files to and from a MS Windows mounted disk. FOG (FOS) has no concept of user’s profile data.

With that said I can think of 2 routes. One involves FOG and the other is strictly a Windows activity.

For the MS Windows only solution use USMT (MS Windows User State Migration Tool). You run this from inside windows as an admin to backup and restore user profiles to a network file share. It works well for both same system user migration such as when the same computer is upgraded from Win 7 to Win10, as well as a different system migration between two computers. You can use USMT interactively of deploy the USMT Save State and USMT Load state functions via a FOG snapin or any other package deployment tool like PDQ Deploy.

Now for a FOG only solution. This task would be done with one of FOG postinit scripts. Where the script would mount the windows 😄 drive and rsync the c:/users directory to a remote NFS file share before the image is deployed to the target computer. Then after the image has been pushed use a FOG postinstall script to rsync the files back to the c:/users directory. This is not a very clean solution because ms windows won’t have the connection between the windows user account and their home directory.

Thanks for the information. Relieves some of my worries.

@Hanz Amazing, thank you! worked a treat.

The access Control Plugin was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! I didn’t know about the plugins.