Suggestion please

[Sebastian Roth]

@ziolucione Possibly you didn’t notice the link I posted earlier: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7727/building-usb-booting-fos-image

We are more than happy to help you find the issue. The best way we can do this is if you take a picture of the screen and post here.

[george1421]

@ziolucione Here is the image that I built in October. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QFAqbNTD6lbOJjtFW6AehJ3DZShffTCo

Download that and “burn” it to a usb drive using RUFUS on a windows computer or dd on a linux box. You will need to edit the grub.cfg file like listed in the tutorial that Sebastian linked to. Also read and understand the caveats.

And just so we are clear, this image file does not work with wifi. It uses the FOG standard kernels and inits, but will boot an uefi system from the flash drive you create.

[ziolucione]

@george1421 Hi guys,
after a DHCP installation and configuration, I was able to capture my first image from one of these tablet.
I have therefore notified that when I register a new one using the same usb stick with FOS (provided by george), Fog tells me the host is already registered…I tried anyway to re-image the device an it worked, but I have 3 different images to capture.
What’s gonna happen?
Another question is, the snapin stuff…how is this supposed to work? Still with FOS or I can use the FOG Client in the Windows environment?

Thank you for your support guys.
Best regards.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione said in Suggestion please:

I have therefore notified that when I register a new one using the same usb stick with FOS (provided by george), Fog tells me the host is already registered…I tried anyway to re-image the device an it worked, but I have 3 different images to capture.

The issue is that the usb network adapter has the same mac address for each computer that is why its says its already registered. I know people do use FOG and image successfully using a single network adapter, I can’t tell you the process because I don’t image that way. I know its possible to do. For now you can just update the mac address on previously imaged computers so you can keep capturing images until someone responds who uses this method.

Another question is, the snapin stuff…how is this supposed to work? Still with FOS or I can use the FOG Client in the Windows environment?

FOS Linux is only used to capture and deploy images, snapins are managed by the FOG Client installed on the target computer. You can install the FOG Client software in your reference image or after deployment. The FOG Client will then check into the FOG server to see if there are any pending jobs, like deploy a snapin.

[ziolucione]

Hi george,
Thanks for your reply.
Damn, that was not my aim. I usually need to re/image 10 tablets at the same time, so I cannot rely on the below workflow.

What if I go back to the wifi process?
Is the FOS gonna to work with the wifi adapter instead?

Thank you for your reply.
Lucio

[george1421]

@ziolucione said in Suggestion please:

I usually need to re/image 10 tablets at the same time, so I cannot rely on the below workflow.

What if I go back to the wifi process?

I would question the logic of attempting to image 10 systems at a time over wifi. Remember its a shared resource (wifi bandwidth). While I don’t have any basis for this opinion, but I think imaging 5 systems over wifi at the same time would be slower than imaging 10 systems sequentially over a wired connection. I can say I can push out a 25GB image over wired in about 3 minutes, that’s on a well managed 1GbE network. Wifi is still in the 100Mb/s range (shared).

So let me ask you this. Once the systems are imaged, will you managed them with FOG or are you working as a VAR system reseller? Because FOG has a process (that i call load and go), in that you can deploy images to a target system that FOG will forget about once the image has been deployed. You won’t be able to manage them after the OS is deployed with FOG and you don’t have to register the target computer with FOG. You basically load the OS and take the target computer somewhere else (go).

If you wan to go down the wifi route we can, its not easy but its not really that hard either. It will take some technical skills on your end because we (I) will have to create a custom FOS Linux kernel for your deployment. This will be a hardware specific build so it will help if all of the tablets are alike, or at least have the same wifi adapter. I still think having multiple usb ethernet adapters is the way to go none the less.

[ziolucione]

@george1421 Hi george,
Exactly, I do not need to manage the tablets once I have imaged or re-imaged them.
Can I have more more info about this ‘load & go’ project?
And also, our image should be very thin (approx 5~7 GB) so using the wifi shouldn’t be an issue - also, the tablets have all the same HW specs - this can change like in 2/3 years time, so probably I will need to upgrade the process in the future.

Thank you for your support guys.

Regards.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione To go with the wireless kernel, I need to know the hardware ID of your wireless network adapter. From the windows side go into the device manager and get the vendor and hardware ID of the wireless adapter and post it here.

[ziolucione]

@george1421

Network adapter:
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3165

Hardware Id:
PCI\VEND_8086&DEV_3165&SUBSYS_80108086&REV_91

Thank you.
L.

[Quazz]

@ziolucione You don’t have to register the devices if you just want to deploy an image.

If you boot into PXE you can then select Deploy image from the FOG menu, select the correct image and it will deploy the image.

Probably easier to integrate in your workflow than a wifi setup.

[ziolucione]

Hi @Quazz
I don’t have any PXE boot feature on these tablets, that’s why I am using the FOS built by george. And the issue is related to the MAC address attached to the USB network adapter I am using. So each terminal will be recognized as the previous one and I cannot choose what image to deploy (because it has been registered to use that image the first time I have used the adapter).
That’s why I’d prefer to explore the wifi workflow instead.

Thank you for the support.
Regards.
L.

[Quazz]

@ziolucione If there is no task planned for that MAC, it should boot to the FOG menu, no? You’d choose the image to deploy on the tablets themselves if that makes sense.

But if you prefer to handle it from WebUI then the wifi route is the way to go.

[ziolucione]

@Quazz Hi Quazz,
where is this FOG menu entry in the FOS USB linux sub-system?
If I select the first option it is going to capture or deploy, depending on what I have selected form the FOG server UI on that terminal (registered).

There is no item listed where I can select the image ID.

Thank you.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione OK here we go with this session…

It appears that the wifi solution is not totally complete. We got it functional but not nice. The OP I was working with at the time had linux skills so I worked on the hard bits and he got it working.

So lets do the hard bits first.
Here is a wifi kernel. I have about a 70% confidence in this kernel build. It seems like each wifi adapter needs its own firmware. Once we identify the firmware I can build it into the kernel. I’ve included the firmware I “think” it needs based on the device number.

We will use the FOS Linux boot drive you created previously for this. Here is the kernel https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aQcwnDOSeX14Lz4vDU4eXBGQlzs8UZ18 download that as bzImage and copy that to the usb flash drive replacing bzImage on that drive. Be mindful of the case because it IS important.

As for the virtual hard drive lets start with this one. https://drive.google.com/open?id=13NYcilNuw0bBRpV7OL7nBZZLcrcThUDq download this and save it at init.xz onto the fog server (not in the ipxe path, but some other location. You will need to work on it.)

We are going to use this process: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Modifying_the_Init_Image

xz -d init.xz
mkdir initdir
mount -o loop init initdir

Now from here you need to change to ./initdir/etc directory and edit the wpa_supplicant file. In that file edit ssid=“ssid_name” change the ssid_name to match your wifi ssid. Edit #psk=“password” remove the preceding # and replace password with your wifi password. Save and exit the file.

Now repack the inits. Change back to the base directory where you unpacked the inits.

umount initdir
rmdir initdir
xz -C crc32 -9 init

That should recreate init.xz file. Move that file to the usb flash drive replacing the existing init.xz on the flash drive.

Now usb boot FOS linux. At the Grub boot menu select option 6 to Debug. After a few screens of text where you need to clear with an enter key, you will be dropped to a linux command prompt. At this prompt key in ip addr show to see if you picked up an IP address from your network. If you get to this point good or bad, post your results.

[george1421]

@ziolucione said in Suggestion please:

There is no item listed where I can select the image ID.

This menu item is not present with booting FOS Linux from a flash drive. This is a function of the iPXE menu that we don’t have. Don’t worry, I have a trick for this too, but lets get wifi working first.

[ziolucione]

@george1421 Hi, tried option 6 and I have gotUnable to mount root fs on unknow block
Kernel offset: disabled
Not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknow block.

No CLI after this, it’s just frozen at this point.
Any thoughts?

Regards.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione Please wait for a bit. I’m working out the solution. It appears that I did not save the previous work I did on this so I have to start over again with the virtual hard drive. No worries I should have it done in the next few hours.

[Sebastian Roth]

@ziolucione Which version of FOG do you have installed?

@george1421 Just wondering if this is a RAMDISk size issue as well?

[ziolucione]

@Sebastian-Roth Hi Sebastian,
I have pulled the master branch from Git.

Thank you @george1421

Thanks guys.
Lucio

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth said in Suggestion please:

Just wondering if this is a RAMDISk size issue as well?

Possible depending on the config file settings. Once I have it perfected I’ll create a FOS boot image of it so the settings are right.