Noreg Image Uploading?

[A Former User]

Hello All,
I currently use the noreg to simplify applying images to bare metal systems and love it so much that I’m wondering if there is a way to upload images to the FOG server in a similar way. Is there a way, from the client at the pxe menu, to generate an image name and image type and then upload it to the FOG server? While policy is to backup a user’s system before working on it, this would make my and my tech’s lives much easier.

Thanks!

[Jaymes Driver]

Currently there is not.

There is a Long registration that is really close but it doesn’t go through the image creation only assigning a already created image to the registered unit. There is also no way to Upload an image from the PXE command line, only deploy an image with a “quick image”.

I’m sure with some coding it could be possible!

I would like to see more command and management through the command line too!

[Jason Garrison]

I’m not aware of this being an option, but I’m sure since the program is Open Source you could. It seems like it would only need to call the SQL db from a custom menu option you would need to build.

Granted this option is a little more complicated than this tutorial, but this will show you how to make a custom menu option.
[url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/how-to-modify-the-pxe-boot-menu-to-allow-the-booting-of-iso-files.154/[/url]

I would assume this should be moved to the Feature Request forum though.
[url]http://fogproject.org/forum/forums/feature-request.11/[/url]

[Kevin]

Yes there is, with limitations, and recommend against it.

You said that you use the noreg, which what you would need. However, the only thing you should need to change is is the img=down to img=up for each individual image. I don’t have the commands in front of me, but that should be all that’s needed.

HOWEVER, there is a fail-safe measure that’s removed when uploading the image. When you upload the image the normal way, it writes the image to a temporary file until it’s completed, then writes it to the original image. If you upload an image with noreg, it’ll directly overwrite the image and not worry about making a temporary file first. What you would need to be careful with is that if anyone tries to image a computer with the image you are uploading with this method, they will push down a corrupt image since it’s currently being pushed.

I’ve personally never tried it, but you should be able to set the image similar to pushing it to a machine, but instead of down, put it to up. Of course, you’ll probably need to create the image template first in the FOG web interface. If you skip this step, it might still work, it might just not show up as a selectable image.

[A Former User]

Thank you for your feedback!

After thinking about it some more, wouldn’t make more sense to accoplish this through the full registration process?

Is it possible to create a new manual registration so that instead of being asked which existing image and OSID to apply to the host, you are asked to input a new OS name, storage group, image type…etc so that a new image is created and uploaded directly through the registration process?

I really appreciate all of your help!

[chad-bisd]

I actually tried to create something like this, but the process dynamically creating an image definition during registration was a bit tough.

[A Former User]

Just in case this process would benefit others out there…what I wound up doing is setting up a large samba share on the FOG server and adding an Acronis iso to the pxe menu. That allows us to push a unique disk-to-image-file backup directly from a client system to the FOG server’s samba share without going through the registration process. I was hesitant to go this way because I thought having two processes for imaging would be messy, however it’s turned out to be a great! We use the FOG side for bare metal imaging of new systems and we use the Acronis / Samba side for backing up incoming systems before we work on them. This keeps the FOG server nice and clean and the separation is a better setup for me because when it’s time to purge old client system backups there’s no worry of mistakenly deleting a production image.

Thanks to everyone involved in the fog project. It’s just awesome!

Scott.