Some function questions about fog server

[weidongyan]

Hi team. Recently I am doing with fog server with its basic functions and got some more questions about its functions.

1. When deploying images, can fog server create users for that client computer? Does fog server add or delete users through the network? Maybe not during imaging, just normal situation for users adjustment.

2. I tried the snapin functions, but I could only succeed in .msi files. And I read the article but I could not succeed in .exe files.

3. Can fog server achieve remote desktop function? Like remote controlling computers. Delete or enter files to the computers.

Thank you.

[george1421]

@weidongyan said in Some function questions about fog server:

When deploying images, can fog server create users for that client computer? Does fog server add or delete users through the network? Maybe not during imaging, just normal situation for users adjustment.

To put it bluntly, FOG doesn’t care or know about target operating systems. I had to know about target file systems, but not the Operating System itself. The component that captures and deploys images runs on Linux. Linux can not step into the target system’s OS and make changes (like create users). [In my case I have the unattend.xml file do local user creation for me but that is after FOG has left the system]

2. I tried the snapin functions, but I could only succeed in .msi files. And I read the article but I could not succeed in .exe files.

Sorry I don’t use snapins so I can’t be of much help here. I do use PDQ Deploy for this activity, but that is a bit off point.

3. Can fog server achieve remote desktop function? Like remote controlling computers. Delete or enter files to the computers.

Like I said before FOG doesn’t step into the target system’s OS at all. Its primary mission is to push the disk image to the remote hard drive and exit.

With that said there are a limited set of management tools built into fog, but they are geared around system imaging and not system management. If you want a real system management system you will need to look to SCCM. FOG is not a replacement or competitor of SCCM.

If you wanted an opensource remote desktop system that is web based you could look at guacamole. While I haven’t checked, you might be able to install guacamole side by side with FOG, do what you need.

[EduardoTSeoane]

We work a lot with scripts, we don’t use msi and exe, all our snapins are developed as scripts, usually powershell for windows and bash scripting for linux, we use sometimes php, python, perl… called from bash a so on.

Check the potential of the scripting for the 2 first points.
And as alternative to deploy software you can work with snapins+chocolatey

On the third point, we use fog snapins to start/stop services, deploy clients etc…

Currently we are using a reversed vnc server deployed/configured/started/stopped/removed as an unattended snapin, where we have firewalls, As GUI we use a Guacamole Gateway with a vnc-proxy, on the other side where we have not firewalls we are using Dameware and RDP to remote control. The services can be controlled with scripted snapins but the clients/servers/proxyes… must be provided as external services.

I only want to add, that with a deep knowledge of the targets, and with a good knowledge about scripting, and if you add a custom/complete toolset around FOG, you can get a pretty and usefull system admin/management environment.