Image broken after capture
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Hi guys. I posted this on the reddit as well but I noticed it seems to be pretty dead there and it says that this is the place where everything happens so…here I am.
I am running a crypto mine and I use FOG to image my rigs. I have a particular type of motherboard that I have to fight with to make it work. Getting it to mine in the first place is an exercise in frustration but that is neither here or nor there. The problem I’m having is, after all the fighting and hair-pulling to make the rig mine, FOG ends up breaking it.
I had this one rig mining all day to make sure it would work before I captured the image to deploy to the rest of the boards of the same type that I have. However, once the capture task had completed and the rig rebooted, it would no longer boot into Windows and kept boot-looping until it started auto-repair and then just shut down. It has done this at least twice already and each time I make it work and try to capture an image…well, we all know Einstein’s definition of insanity, right?
It is my understanding that the only change FOG makes to the drive from which it captures an image is to resize the partition to the amount of used space to make the image as small as possible. Why then does capturing an image off this rig break the Windows installation and cause it to boot-loop? What is going on and how do I prevent it? I’m ready to throw things through windows, here.
Help, please.
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@Magiq This is “hidden” in the image settings. Each image is either defined as being resizable or non-resizable or even RAW. In your case I’d just leave your current image as is and create a fresh image definition. Make it type RAW, associate to the hosts (source and destination), capture and deploy. Be aware the RAW image will be much bigger so you need enough space on your FOG server.
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I guess there are a few things from your post that stand out.
- You have a non-standard install of windows with a delicate configuration that is difficult to get set.
- FOG assumes a standard windows configuration to do it’s job.
So what can you do.
- When creating your golden image create it on the smallest disk you will ever deploy your image to and then clone it with single disk non-resizable.
- Again create your golden image on the smallest disk you have in your fleet. Capture your disk as raw (dd) mode. This will create an exact copy of the golden image without any FOG funny stuff. This will be the slowest but most exact way to clone the hard drive.
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It’s not really a non-standard Windows install. It’s really just Windows with a few mining apps installed. There are only the regular partitions that Windows creates when you install it. I have two other types of motherboards I use for mining that I can image and capture all day and they work fine.
Someone on the reddit did actually comment and they suggested the same thing, doing the raw capture without the resizing. I will certainly give that a shot. However, I’ve just spent the last 20 minutes looking around in the webGUI and I can’t find how to make it do the capture without resizing. How do I do that?
Thanks.
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@Magiq This is “hidden” in the image settings. Each image is either defined as being resizable or non-resizable or even RAW. In your case I’d just leave your current image as is and create a fresh image definition. Make it type RAW, associate to the hosts (source and destination), capture and deploy. Be aware the RAW image will be much bigger so you need enough space on your FOG server.
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@Sebastian-Roth Awesome, thank you. I have actually deleted the existing image because it was fubar anyway. I have created the new image as “sector by sector” and it is currently capturing right now. I’ll post back whether it works or not.
Thanks again! I hope this works. It took another two hours for me to get the rig to mine again. Windows is so damn finicky with drivers, I hate it.
EDIT: It worked. Thank you!
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@Magiq Well if RAW works then you might try non-resizable image type as well. Suppose you have used resizable from the beginning?
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@Sebastian-Roth Yes. This mine was set up a couple of years before I became in charge of it. The other motherboards I have all have resizable images and they work fine. Does the regular non-resizable image take up less space than the sector-by-sector image?
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@Magiq said in Image broken after capture:
Does the regular non-resizable image take up less space than the sector-by-sector image?
Absolutely. Image size of resizable and non-resizable are (almost) the same as both only capture the sectors with actual data in them. Only RAW captures each sector be it zero or random data.
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@Sebastian-Roth Interesting. I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.
