Erasing current MBR/GPT tables.... taking about 5-10 minutes

[Tom Elliott]

@mronh The only thing I can suggest is be patient.

[fry_p]

@tom-elliott We were seeing this same “issue” last week on 1.5.3 prior to the host registration fix. I have re-installed to fix the aforementioned registration issue, but I am getting pressured as to why the MBR/GPT erasure takes so long by the techs now. Is this part of this new feature you mentioned earlier? I myself will test tomorrow to get an exact time it takes, but I wanted to let you know that this may be wider spread than initially thought.

[Tom Elliott]

@fry_p the only thing I can think it is is a patch to fix ntfs inode issues. I could revert that oat cheatibg but then we run into the old issue of mft being corrupted in some circumstances.

[luco60]

Damn we are having the same problem, we are trying to get back to 1.5.1

[Tom Elliott]

The best I can suggest is maybe try an older kernel for now. Jumping between versions is a bit extreme. I believe 1.5.2 was on 4.15.2 kernel

[luco60]

Okay thanks we will try that, we are just starting to use FOG so a fresh install isn’t a big problem for us

[MCSDFog]

@tom-elliott We are seeing the same thing. Went from 1.5.2 to 1.5.3. Switching to the 4.15.2 kernel fixed this problem for us.

Thanks

[jclumbo33]

We had the same issue on kernel 14.16.6. Reverting back to 4.15.2 fixed this for us as well.

[Tom Elliott]

Anybody mind downloading the latest 4.17.0 kernels?

I’ve added back patch that I haven’t had to do in a while, hopefully it can help fix the slowness?

[JGallo]

@tom-elliott I’m going to upgrade right now. I can try it and check back.

[JGallo]

Looks like formatting is much faster now using kernel 4.17.0 vs previous kernel. Thank you @Tom-Elliott I hope others have same experience. I must also add that I’m on Ubuntu Server 16.04 and FOG 1.5.4

[Lemeunier]

@tom-elliott I try to download it but… I’ve got this error : Error: Download Failed: Failed - filesize

[Tom Elliott]

@lemeunier that’s a totally separate error, can you please open a new thread, or search for the similar error and see if those suggestions help.

[MCSDFog]

@tom-elliott At this point I stayed on 1.5.3 and I ran tests with three different kernels. 4.16.6 and 4.17.0 behaved similarly. They both took over 4 min to finish Erasing MBR/GPT. With kernel 4.15.2 the Erasing MBR/GPT took about 1 sec.

[dbettens]

I had the same problem with a fresh install on unbuntu18.04 running fog 1.5.3
as suggested i downloaded the kernels from a previous version, i used 4.14.4 (both 64 & 32bit) and this fixed the issue too

[matijn]

I want to add to the above.
You need to chmod 777 rights to /var/www/fog/service/ipxe , for succesvol installing (overwrite) another kernel.
Can confirm 4.15.2 (32 + 64) kernels are instantly doing ‘Erasing current MBR/GPT tables’ !

FTP incorrect error, check:
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_FTP

Credentials / Passwords
There are a few places where all the credentials (on a standard install) should match exactly.
Web Interface -> Storage Management -> [Your storage node] -> Management Username & Management Password
Web Interface -> FOG Configuration -> FOG Settings -> TFTP Server -> FOG_TFTP_FTP_USERNAME & FOG_TFTP_FTP_PASSWORD
All of those should match (again, on a standard installation).
/opt/fog/.fogsettings (password in plain, should match)

FTP upload class fix:
chown fog -R /images
chmod -R 777 /images

[benc]

Please forgive my ignorance, but could someone point me to a guide on how to change kernels? I’m pretty sure I understand at least at a basic level what the kernel is and what it does, but I’ve never done this before and the googling I’ve done on installing new kernels has only confused me. In my case the step where FOG erases the MBR/GPT tables is taking 6+ minutes which is longer than the actual imaging process takes. As soon as I get past this current batch of laptops that must be imaged ASAP, I’ll be starting from scratch with a new hard drive in one of my fog servers and probably starting with Ubuntu Server 14 and not going any higher. So far, in my experience, upgrading one thing breaks other things and it just snowballs from there. Sorry for the long post but this has been a very difficult day.

[george1421]

@benc Its under fog settings -> kernels. Roll back your current kernel to 4.15.2 until the developers can get the issues with the current linux releases sorted out. You will need both the 64 bit and 32 bit kernels when you download them.

[benc]

@george1421 Thanks, I will give that a try later today.

[andreiv]

This issue is still there in 1.5.4. It isn’t a real problem as much as it is an annoyance.