Don't want host registration.

[clickwir]

I’ve got FOG 1.4.4 up and I’m trying to make it do something useful and there’s a lot of “host registration” stuff that’s not needed. There’s big scary “Host is NOT registered!” red text on the PXE Menu, how do I get rid of that? People are going to think something is wrong and when it’s really just an unused feature.

I have no interest in registering a system to a PXE server, yet I can’t seem to find the menu options that have to do with Registering and nuke them.

[george1421]

So you are using fog to image computers you will never see again, like a OEM remanufacturer?

[clickwir]

No, we would be reinstalling these systems later with something else.

What I want is to boot an OS installer. RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu and a few Windows Server flavors. There’s a large diversity of servers and OS combinations, that could change frequently.

We aren’t looking for a way to manage multiple images of each OS on each server. All we want is to PXE boot a server, get a list of OS’s and start the install. The changes to a server between each OS install are significant enough that an image won’t work, most of the time. A fresh OS install, will work every time.

From what I’m learning; this seemingly simple task is complex at best and impossible the rest of the time.

[george1421]

@clickwir Well lets understand that you are trying to do something that FOG isn’t really intended to do. Yes it can be done the way you plan on using it. There just isn’t an option to shut that message off, because its normally important to know. if the only thing stopping you is it saying its unregistered you can fix that.

So if you want to remove the unregistered all you need to do is edit the php script and remove the words.

Edit this file: /var/www/html/fog/lib/hooks/bootitem.hook.php

Look for this section of code:

        // This is the start of the MENU information.
        // 'ipxe' 'menustart' key's followed by the item
        if ($arguments['ipxe']['menustart']) {
            $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][0]
                = ':MENU';
            $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][1]
                = 'menu';
            if ($arguments['Host']
                && $arguments['Host']->isValid()
            ) {
                $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][2]
                    = 'colour --rgb 0x00ff00 0';
                $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][4]
                    = 'item --gap Host is registered as '
                    . $arguments['Host']->get('name');
            } else {
                $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][2]
                    = 'colour --rgb 0xff0000 0';
                $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][4]
                    = 'item --gap Host is NOT registered!';
            }
            $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][3]
                = 'cpair --foreground 0 3';
            $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][5]
                = 'item --gap -- -------------------------------------';
        }

Remove these lines:

else {
                $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][2]
                    = 'colour --rgb 0xff0000 0';
                $arguments['ipxe']['menustart'][4]
                    = 'item --gap Host is NOT registered!';
            }

Save the file and your problems will be gone. Just make sure you edit only what I showed you removing the else { to the enclosing curly brace }

[clickwir]

I’ll take a look at this, thank you.

Different subject, why are post replies showing up above the posts previous to them but below the original post? This seems very odd. I’ve read through several posts here and it’s frustrating to start at the top, then the “next” entry is all the way at the bottom. Then scroll UP one entry, but if it’s a long enough entry you have to scroll down to read the entry, then UP through the entry you just read, through the next entry just to get to the top of the “next” entry. Then down through that entry, then up through it and the next and then down and up…

This seems needlessly complicated. Is there a setting to fix this?

[Wayne Workman]

@clickwir why not use kickstart? Or a VMware image? Or a Xen image? Or usb media? Yumi can put every iso you want onto one thumb drive… dell iDRAC and hp iLO are purpose-designed for installing from iso remotely…

Fog is not the right tool for this.

[clickwir]

These are to bare metal, not VM’s. So VM images wouldn’t be of any use.

USB and integrated management are how we are doing it now, it’s not great. Like I said, we have a very wide mix of servers. Some are pre-production, old, maybe half broken but good enough if we can get an OS on it. Some are retail and new and they work great for booting an ISO from iLO. Many might not have licenses for the iLO, idrac, IMM, etc.

We are trying to find a better solution. Looking around online, tons of people want something exactly like what I’m looking for but it doesn’t seem to exist. Maybe it’s a technical limitation and it will never exist.

Maybe imaging is the closest we can get. But still, I can’t go “registering” every server. I need a more simple solution to Create an image and Deploy an image. At least on the boot menu, there is an option to Deploy an image. But the process for Creating an image is too complex for our setups.

[george1421]

@clickwir said in Don't want host registration.:

This seems needlessly complicated. Is there a setting to fix this?

Unfortunately that is how the forum works. You have the original post and then the newest responses. I know its different than most other forums or blogs, but you will also understand that the latest posts are at the top and you don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom so see answers to previous questions. It took me quite a while to get use to the format coming from Spiceworks.

[Wayne Workman]

@clickwir said in Don't want host registration.:

These are to bare metal, not VM’s. So VM images wouldn’t be of any use.

Make them into VM hosts. You can do this for free with Fedora, CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu. It’s very straightforward, secure, and stable. There’s no performance benefits to be had with bare metal anymore, VMs perform just as good for the alloted resources they have - plus the huge benefits of virtualization.

[george1421]

@clickwir said in Don't want host registration.:

But the process for Creating an image is too complex for our setups.

Actually I see this just the opposite. The way you are going about it of selecting a boot iso and deploying it via FOG is more complicated than using fog in its traditional mode. Now understand I still have the feeling you are functioning as an OEM reseller, that is fine (I really don’t care, it more about the process). But if these servers will remain at your location you would be better off to create generic images of linux or windows and deploy with FOG. There are people who reimage entire classrooms of computers between classes. They switch from linux to windows and back in a single day. Granted they are using similar hardware, and servers tend to have a lot of specialized hardware not found in a desktop environment. But you will have to deal with the hardware either way when you install from an iso image.

If you created your linux reference images using standard hard drive partitions (not LVM) fog can resize these partitions to match the size of the target hardware disks. It would be all dynamic. A registered server could be reimaged totally unattended if you wanted. The hardest part to script would be applying the unique settings to each server (ip address, services, firewall settings, etc). But spending a little time with a bash shell scripting and that could be all automatic too.

In the end use what ever works best for you and your company, just know there may be different ways to go about this that is a bit less labor intensive.

[Sebastian Roth]

@clickwir said in Don't want host registration.:

We aren’t looking for a way to manage multiple images of each OS on each server. All we want is to PXE boot a server, get a list of OS’s and start the install. The changes to a server between each OS install are significant enough that an image won’t work, most of the time.

Why would you use FOG for that? Just setup a DHCP and TFTP service on a server and you’re done… Maybe add apache/nginx and NFS to also server files through HTTP and NFS. All fairly easy to setup by hand and no need to have all the PHP/MySQL/FTP foo that would come with a full FOG install.