@Aaexy said in Deploying FOG in a Secure‑Boot‑Mandated UEFI Environment:

Secure Boot policy Must remain enabled at all times; only Microsoft‑signed keys are in the firmware (no option to enrol custom keys).

If this is the case there is nothing you can do with FOG. You will need to get the ipxe kernel (ipxe.efi / snp.efi) and bzImage signed with the microsoft keys so they can boot in your environment. While this pains me to say, you would probably be better off with a different imaging solution than FOG.

@mbghost said in UEFI Boot - Kernel panic: Unable to mount root fs on /dev/ram0:

I disabled Snooping

If that was dhcp snooping I can see where it might be causing a problem. If that’s igmp snooping then for multicasting you want that enabled.

@mbghost said in UEFI Boot - Kernel panic: Unable to mount root fs on /dev/ram0:

But when I try to create an image from the FOG web console and capture image, it breaks everything. I get the same error on all device

Mind including the error you are seeing? It would be helpful to include a screen shot or picture of the error so we can see the context of the error too.

@mbghost If the network test doesn’t work then lets focus in on that toshiba all in one. Lets identify the hardware components since it seems to be the focus of the problem. First do the easy stuff.

@mbghost I’m still leaning towards init.xz corruption. Its very strange that on a fresh fog sever it works on day one and then the next its no good.

Just for clarification its all and every Toshiba all in ones but other models work just fine? Its only this specific model.

What I’m thinking at the moment is that bzImage transfers fine and its around 8MB in size. The kernel also boots fine because its getting to the point where it attempts to connect to the root file system.

init.xz is a zstd compressed image. Its compressed size is around 350MB. Both images are very small in size. Something is happening to the init.xz image to where bzImage is not able to mount it and the kernel panics.

This image persists across multiple deployments and multiple installs of FOG server. It also crosses different init.xz and bzImage kernels.

FOS linux does boot 1 out of 12 attempts.

So where could the problem hide?

1. The FOG server hardware if that was a consistent deployment throughout the server rebuilds. (test try building fog server on a desktop/laptop computer to rule out fog server infrastructure)
2. Something with the network between the fog server and the target computer. (move target computer as physically close to fog server as possible and test deployments eliminating all of the existing networking between fog server and target computer)
3. Something with the target computer. (if you have been testing with the same computer throughout these tests use a different computer. Its possible there is a ram issue with this computer)

Right now there isn’t a clear picture on the cause. I can say this IS unique and I’ve haven’t seen this before with FOG.

Something else you might do is in the fog settings, set the log level to 7. I think the default is 4. 7 is verbose and the kernel might spit out more information to why its not happy with the init.xz file. Like decompression failed.

@mbghost This error message baffles me. If its happening where I think its happening its not a pxe boot issue. This error happens after you pick an iPXE menu item or if you tell a computer to image.

So you can probably rule out ipxe.efi/snp.efi here.

This error message is generated with FOS linux is booting. The kernel has booted and when it goes to connect to init.xz the format of init.xz is corrupt for some reason.

What version of FOG are you running
What version of “the kernel” are you running?
What version of init.xz are you running (get this from a bios computer that boots. the version of the init will be under the fog logo)

What computer is this happening on (make and model)?
Is it all uefi systems or only from one manufacture?
How much ram does this computer have?
Are you seeing both bzImage and init.xz get transferred completely to the target machine. This will be visible just after you pick an item on the FOG iPXE menu.

To me this error is telling me something is wrong with init.xz or for some reason bzImage is not the right kernel for init.xz

@mbghost said in Unable to Get IP Address After PXE Menu on Physical PC (FOG Project on ESXi):

ESXi server → Cisco Switch → Client.

So just to be clear pxe boot the vm on esxi works no prob, but physical host does not.

Lets test this, on the target computer, put one of those cheap unmanaged switches (like the $20 monoprice ones) between the pxe booting computer and the building network switch. Now try to pxe boot. If it works then get with your networking group and make sure the switch ports are configured for portfast, because its spanning tree causing you some troubles. Understand this is an educated guess based on what you’ve posted.

Just for some background on this, standard spanning tree takes 27 seconds to start forwarding traffic. FOS Linux boots in under 15 seconds, so its already given up trying to get an IP address by the time spanning tree starts forwarding data.

@uzee FOG doesn’t change or really step into the target system during deployment. You CAN do this if you write a post install script that will get called once the target image is deployed to the target computer. In the case of a linux computer you could potentially set the target computer’s name here by updating the /etc/hostname file or anything else you can do with a bash script. The FOG Client can also be configured to make changes to the target computer or install applications based on instructions from the fog server. Its really identifying what you want to do and how much automation you want to script. Its all possible with FOG and a little creativity on your end. Since you already know Ubuntu (linux) bending FOG to what you want will be easier than coming strictly from a MS Windows background.

@uzee Your approach to this (imaging) really depends on your short term and long term goals.

If imaging these machines are just a one time time (like if you were a PC reseller) then there is a process I call load and go. where you pxe boot one time into the FOG iPXE menu and then issue a Deploy Image from the FOG iPXE menu. This will deploy the target image to the target computer one time and then the FOG server will forget about the computer. Again you would use this method if you were going to stuff an OS onto some hardware and then never see that target computer again.

The other method is the traditional registration, assign an image and then schedule an image deployment. In this case the FOG server will register and know about the target computer in the future. You have to remember though that you register the target computer once and then can deploy many times. Future remote imaging will be possible because you register the target computer with FOG. FOG also gives you the ability to manage the computers in the future if you install the FOG Client.

Now with this registration and then booting. The registration process must be hands on, but imaging can be touch less or at least low touch. Some people will have the target computer configured so that it always pxe boots. In this case the target computer will always pxe boot through the fog ipxe menu. The default action if you don’t touch the computer will be to boot the OS off the hard drive. This boot through the iPXE menu, will also check to see if the fog server has any tasks assigned for the target computer. If there is a task assigned (like reimage the computer) then instead of booting through to the local hard drive, it will boot into imaging. If you couple that with the fog client install on the target coputer’s host OS. When you schedule a deployment to the computer, the fog client will then reboot the computer and then the bios is configured to boot through the fog menu, the target computer will be reimaged without requiring a tech to touch the computer. You would use this process to maybe reset a computer lab between classes, where you can wipe the target computer and then reload the OS on 30 computers in 10 minutes.

The interrupt the booting process twice, is actually pressing F12 to get into the firmware’s boot menu to pick PXE booting. You are not changing the forever boot order, you are just picking one time pxe boot. Yes you will have to do that twice, but this way the default boot is always the hard drive.

@Ryxn I checked and that nic has been in the linux kernel for several years.

And secondly when you checked for missing firmware the kernel wasn’t complaining about missing something.

Its a good thing you were able to get the error while in debug mode. Because that was going to be the next quest for you. To get the system when its behaving badly.

So when you get it into debug mode and its complaining about no nic lets do the following.

ip a s should show if the network interface has an ip address, I’m going to suspect no because it complained about it earlier in the boot process.

lspci -k -nn | more Look through this list until you find the entry. The number in the square brackets will be what you posted earlier. [8086&1502]. See if the nic is visible to the kernel. AND if it is it should mention what kernel driver its using. I’ll give you a for example using my laptop.

0000:00:1f.6 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (
13) I219-V [8086:15fc] (rev 20)
	Subsystem: Dell Ethernet Connection (13) I219-V [1028:0a22]
	Kernel driver in use: e1000e
	Kernel modules: e1000e

lastly if everything looks good, kernel sees the nic, there is a kernel driver assigned. Lets see if time fixes your problem.

When you ran the ip a s command it listed all of the network interfaces and if it has IP addresses. You will need to know the interface name for your network adapter. It may be something like eno1 or ens192, or something else. Get that device name.

Now run this command /sbin/udhcpc -i $iface --now replacing the whole word $iface with the device name listed from the ip command. This will tell the network adapter to again poll for an IP address from your dhcp server. If it picks up an IP address this time, then time does solve your problem and you will need to look into your network configuration and make sure that port-fast or fast-stp is enabled on your network port.

@ProfessorFow OK what I want you to do is on the master node, go into the storage group where this remote node is. Look at this remote node. There should be a ftp user ID and password listed there (said from memory). Use those credentials to connect like you did with the ftp CLI from the master node to the remote node. See if you can login using ftp to the remote node. Then issue a ls command, Its not important what the answer is as long as it gives you an answer and not an error.

If you can’t login using those credentials then on the remote storage node look at the /opt/fog directory. There is a hidden file called .fogsettings. issue the command cat /opt/fog/.fogsettings In that file should be the password for the account used when the fog server was installed. Make sure they match what is on the master node.

There is something with ftp that is not working correctly, that is why the replication is not happening.