@wt_101 said in USB Booting a usb network adapter:

ncm–ecm–axge.efi

I have no idea what that boot loader does. Its a component of iPXE.

So tell me about your dhcp server. What is the manufacturer and model.

The idea is that if we can uniquely identify that usb drive, maybe we can send the proper boot file name. If you are using a windows dhcp server and setup efi policies, that is getting us in the direction. That policy looks to see if the arch value is 0 (bios) or 7 or 9 then its uefi. If we can combine the uefi test with the manufacturer id of the mac address then we could send that alternate boot file name when the target computer is uefi and the mac manufacturer matches. Its easier to do with a linux dhcp server or using dnsmasq as a proxydhcp server.

thanks @george1421 i’ll set up a test configuration according to your recommendation…

@brakcounty Well is there a technical reason… none that I can think of. NFS and SMB are similar protocols. They have similar pitfalls in (in)security. But off the top of my head I think it would work. Why isn’t fog using it? Because NFS is built into linux and nothing extra is needed., NFS IS a very fast protocol. too.

You would need to install and enable samba on the FOG server. Two shares will be needed /images and /images/dev.

You will need to rebuild FOS Linux initrd to include the smbclient program. The you will need to update the fog.mount script (in FOS) to use the smbclient to mount the remote storage instead of using the linux mount command.

This thread will give you clues where to look for the tweaks for smb: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14791/feature-request-for-fog-1-6-x-configure-image-capture-to-use-nfsv4-instead-of-nfsv3

@george1421 As you said those ports are dynamic, however I found a way to lock some ports to make sure they don’t change from this thread

I did everything except RPCRQUOTADOPTS and the post init scripts ran fine without delay. I’m assuming this won’t change as I had to restart the nfs-kernel-server.service to apply the changes. Hopefully this will stick.

Small note at the bottom of the linked thread, make sure you allow the ports in ufw.

@brakcounty Pretty sure it’s not required.

@p4cm4n ipxe is loaded from the USB drive, EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi. This file is actually the ipxe.efi kernel file taken from my FOG server in /tftproot/

@zfeng Glad you figured this out. When you find a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one or more is incorrect, or they are incomplete.

@george1421 WE GOT IT! Thanks for your help!

@juelson Yes and what didn’t work? From your other thread you are using fog 1.4.4. That should support uefi systems, but it probably won’t see your nvme drives. For UEFI systems you need to send a different boot loader than for bios. For bios, dhcp option 67 should be undionly.kpxe that will pxe boot a bios based computer. For uefi based systems you need to have dhcp option 67 set to ipxe.efi. or snp.efi. Since you are using a really old version of FOG with new hardware you might be out of luck until you upgrade to FOG 1.5.x branch.

Points of interesting.

You need to update your FOS Linux kernel to 5.15.x series for the latest hardware support (FOG Web UI -> Kernel update) You need FOG 1.5.9 to update your version of iPXE to the latest version. In the Dell firmware set the disk mode to ahci mode. The default of raid-on will not work with FOG. Disable secure boot in the uefi frimware.

@george1421 Got it. I set up the rules using ufw with the ports from that list. I only tested a Full Reg and Inv so far. It hangs on Running Init Scripts for while then skips it, I think that is the script that pulls the serial number from the bios and auto-populates it as the hostname. I confirmed this when I disabled ufw and that step went right through without delay.

@george1421 So the second part of this is; I would create a custom FOG iPXE menu item to test this next bit. Since refind exists in the http path we can use the http protocol to grab the files you need.

I would start out by cloning the FOG provided refind.conf file to… for this example refind2.conf. Place any files you want to load in the http path on the fog server but not in the fog file path because an upgrade will delete your custom files. For this example lets create a new directory with
mkdir /var/www/html/crefind place your cloned refind2.conf file in there plus any other files you want to load onto the refind vhd.

set http-path http://${fog-ip} set custrefind-path ${http-path}/crefind set refind-path ${http-path}/forg/service/ipxe kernel ${refind-path}/refind_x64.efi imgfetch --name refind.conf ${custrefind-path}/refind2.conf refind.conf imgfetch --name os_linux.png ${custrefind-path}/os_linux.png os_linux.png imgfetch --name theme.conf ${custrefind-path}/theme.conf theme.conf boot || goto MENU

Understand I did not debug this menu at all, I just glued the bits together. So it might work or might now. But the idea is correct. Remember in your refind2.conf file the ipxe vhd has no paths so everything is stored in the root of the vhd. So this config file stanza
icon /EFI/refind/themes/rEFInd-minimal-drunkcj/icons/os_linux.png
Needs to be rewritten as
icon os_linux.png

@george1421 Thanks ! I found the problem few minutes after this post, with this subject
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/12356/refind-conf-doesn-t-appear-to-be-used

@brakcounty I guess you will have to look into implementing NFSv4 then: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14791/feature-request-for-fog-1-6-x-configure-image-capture-to-use-nfsv4-instead-of-nfsv3

I read everything written here and thought about this: If earlier such manipulations were possible, is there a chance that Windows still did not provide for something. Is it possible to hack the system and change the memory size for updating? How is this even possible? I used to contact raid data recovery to recover the data I lost during the system update process and thought that even if they can retear the data, is it impossible to change the amount of memory used by this data?