Testers

@rodluz ok that is the right one, it shifts around depending on the distro and the version of php installed. Adjust the values as I posted then reboot the fog server. Oh, your fog server should have at least 4GB of ram allocated to it. It only need 1 or 2 vCPU. You may need more vCPU if you have a large campus where more than 500 computers running the FOG Client will be hitting your FOG server.

@rodluz What path did you find it in? There should (really) only be one www.conf in the php path.

If it was commented out the default may be 32MB. Set it to 256M save the file and reboot. That should address the failure under heavy load, basically it was running out of process memory and couldn’t recycle fast enough.

@rodluz Ok it runs fine until you have a heavy demand on the fog server. Since you are running an older version of FOG we will probably need to tweak a value in the www.conf file. Search the /etc directory for it, it will probably be in th /etc/php/7.1 path. Edit the www.conf file there is a line towards the bottom where it allocates 32MB of ram, we need to bump that to 256MB then restart the fog server. That should address the fail under heavy load issue.

Let me get the exact setting.

There should be a line like this:

php_admin_value[memory_limit] = 32M

Adjust it to

php_admin_value[memory_limit] = 256M

Also confirm that the following setting has the right value of 2000

pm.max_requests = 2000

I find it strange that it’s replying with html codes in the picture.

You can access everything from the web ui OK? With the gateway timeouts I might expect that php-fpm isn’t running on the FOG server. ps aux|grep php-fpm

Has the fog server ever worked correctly or was it working fine one day and then broken the next?

Inquiring minds want to know.

@zaboxmaster said in Need some advice / direction:

You are a bit all over the place with this question (not intended to sound harsh) Don’t read more into what I’m going to say because some parts will sound negative only to point out some parts of your idea that need to be worked on. So lets breakdown what you have asked.

I wanted to ask I have a master node with remote storage nodes, I am using the my fog setup for people to bring in old machines to be re-imaged remotely.

So far not a problem

The idea is the end user plugs in his computer PXE boots, then his license key and current OS information along with his computer specs is extracted after inputting, the following: their name and generated code and this will set-off a process which install the correct OS that the have installed with their license key activated.

This is where things get a bit cloudy. FOG doesn’t care about licenses, or windows for that matter. Since you are talking about extracting windows licenses, can we assume you are using OEM licenses for activation? If so the MS EULA doesn’t allow you to deploy OEM licensed media via imaging. You must install systems that use OEM licenses directly from the OEM media to remain compliant with the EULA. If you are using VL licenses then there are ways to utilize and activate these keys with FOG.

So my question is this, Is this possible to do ? Is it possible to run a powershell script at the PXE menu level ?

The FOS Linux engine runs on a customized linux OS. This FOS engine doesn’t know or care about the target OS. The FOS engine can’t do windows specific things like running windows programs, scripts, or adjust the registry. You CAN run bash shell scripts on the FOS engine which is customizable in a FOG Postdownload script (will be important later).

How can i remotely deploy an image to there machine? Without registration onto the system?

Yes and no. You can deploy a system at a remote location from that system’s iPXE menu without registering the system. But it will require a person physically in front of the computer. The issue you will have is that if the system isn’t registered it won’t know which storage node is closest so it will always go back to the master node.

Is there a way to remotely force a machine into a PXE boot selecting a certain image ?

You can’t force a remote machine to pxe boot unless its a Dell (AFAIK). If you have a computer registered in FOG, AND have a FOG client installed on the remote system, AND you have the remote machine configured to boot through the iPXE menu every time you can remotely deploy an image to that computer without end user interaction.

So now with that said, what could you do if you don’t want to register target computers with FOG.

You could use the FOG iPXE menu to deploy image. When you go into that menu item it lists all images released on the master FOG server. Users can deploy an image from there and the system will deploy. You can’t ask questions easily from the user before the image is deployed. BUT you could add a FOG Postdownload script that can ask users questions in a bash shell script. When the postdownload script is executed, the image has already been pushed to the target computer, but before the target computer first boots into the target OS (in this case before WinSetup/OOBE is first run). You can from FOS Linux leave breadcrumbs on the Windows C: drive that can be picked up and used during WinSetup/OOBE. These breadcrumbs could be updating the unattend.xml file with license keys, settings like location and keyboard, etc. You can see examples of this in this tutorial: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script Use this as a reference to what can be done, there is another tutorial that is more up to date but not as detailed as what I’ve linked.

Your idea is possible with a little work, you just need to move out of the windows paradigm a think a bit more in the linux world to pull it off. Just understand you are using FOG in a way it which it wasn’t originally designed. But that is the beauty of an opensource system.

@Atton So now you can ping the workstation by their short windows names?

@Atton So just to confirm that your fog server’s IP address is hard coded and not set by dhcp?

If its not set by dhcp, I might assume you have a ubuntu or debian based FOG server? If that is the case you will need to go into the network manager application and define the name servers and search domain in that app because each time you reboot the fog server the network manager rewrites that resolve.conf file.

@george1421 I had to use *.pushbullet.com and *.api.pushbullet.com for web filtering url in Lightspeed setup

@Atton Ok then something isn’t right.

Do you have an AD domain?
Is the resolv.conf pointing towards your DNS server for AD?