Fog general questions

[rabus]

Hello, ı am working about fog for 3 mounth so ı have some questions that ı can not find their answer in your website. By the way, my english not good, sorry for it.

Firstly, when we starting a deploy or capture process, what is happening in background ?

Secondly, must ı use fog client to activate the deploy or capture process from remote ?

Is there any API file to construe php files?

Lastly, when we use WDS to image different brand computers, happening some problems like blue screen but fog supports it. However, how does fog support it ? How does it provide drivers when imaging a different brand computer?

[george1421]

@rabus Hello Rabus. I’m not sure I understand your questions completely.

1. When you start capture or deploy FOG creates a task for that computer. When target computer is pxe booted, it will see the task and then start the task listed in FOG server. When imaging is done the target computer tells fog server, I’m done then reboots.

2. You can use the fog client to do things for you during FOG imaging, or you can choose to not use FOG Client. If you choose no fog client then you must do the Microsoft way and use the unattend.xml file to connect target computer to domain, activate windows… Just like you do with WDS today.

3. FOG does have a RESTful API like API, but I’m not sure that is your question.

4. FOG is not like WDS. FOG moves reference image from source to FOG server and then from FOG server to target computer. It does not care that image is MS Windows, Linux, or anything else. It only moves images on a hard drive level. You CAN support having a single golden image for many hardwares. You must copy the drivers to the target computer after FOG copies the hard drive to the target computer. The solution may not be clear to you but I do have a few tutorials that show what is possible.

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7391/deploying-a-single-golden-image-to-different-hardware-with-fog

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/8889/fog-post-install-script-for-win-driver-injection

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/4278/utilizing-postscripts-rename-joindomain-drivers-snapins

[Wayne Workman]

@rabus said in Fog general questions:

Secondly, must ı use fog client to activate the deploy or capture process from remote ?

In either situation, the target must PXE boot - somehow. For capture or deploy, the fog server will send a WOL command to the host you targeted. So if the host is configured to accept WOL from the network, it’ll start up. You can specify on some models that it should PXE boot on WOL. Or, you could have the boot order set on the host to always PXE boot. Without doing one of those two settings on every host, you’d need a person at the host to command it to PXE boot. Without PXE Boot being set on every host, and having the fog client installed - without a person there to tell the system to PXE boot, the computer will enter into a reboot loop.

My recommended setup for the least amount of work in the long-run is to set the network as the 1st item in the boot order on all your systems, enable WOL, and use the fog client. In this setup, you tell a system to image from the web UI, and everything just works. The system reboots/boots to the network and images. Setting the boot order and WOL does not need done all at once, you can set systems in this configuration as you need to image them - then they are good to go for future imaging.

Too often, I’ve seen co-workers have to go to a system’s physical location every single time they need to image a system - and command it to pxe boot simply because they are too lazy or lacking the knowledge to setup the boot order and WOL. It results in a ton of leg-work long-term and requires more staff and more hours to get imaging done because of how inefficient the process is.

[rabus]

Thaks for your attention but ı need to a complex answer for first question. For example, when we create a task, how client and server do communication with each other ? Also,how are tools that are tftp, pxe,apache and partclone work ?

[george1421]

@rabus The client communicates with the server over http for command and control functions and then NFS and FTP during imaging .

The client uses http and tftp during pxe booting process.

I feel there are some undisclosed meaning in your questions. If you were clearer with what you need, we may be able to provide a better quality answer for you.