Boot into FOG on iMac 18,1 with Boot Image or boot Partition

[RTOadmin]

Hi,

I’m a Teacher at a secondary School and habe 86 new 18,1 iMac.
I’m not very experienced in FOG and Linux. I am experienced in Windows Server / client an Mac os X.

Is there a way to boot into Fog with PXE on imacs?

Could there created a boot Partition with a linuxPXE to boot into pxe?

If not, can someone provide me a bootable ISO to boot from CD oder USB into Fog.

---

I have read some topics in this forum and tried some hours but my abilities on linux are poor.

So If someone could do this job for our school (teamviewer or so), we can pay for this job.

thank you very much for helping.
Kind Regards
Mathias

[george1421]

@rtoadmin I can help with a few things. We do have a process to create a USB boot drive. I have a tutorial here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6350/usb-boot-uefi-client-into-fog-menu-easy-way
This process is pretty easy. This is option 1.

Option 2 is to build a FOS Linux boot disk. This boot disk will boot directly into FOS Linux. You will not have some fog features, but the system will image.

With option 1 or 2 we still may run into a problem. The newer Mac computers have a security chip in them called T2. This T2 chip sits between memory, the CPU, and your storage media to manage data encryption. That T2 chip doesn’t get along with the linux kernel to well. There are some kernel patches that indicate they will work. I have an older one-off linux kernel with these T2 patches. I’m going to check to see if I can get them to compile into a contemporary linux kernel.

ref: https://wiki.t2linux.org/guides/kernel/

[RTOadmin]

@george1421

I did it like in the Tutorial but no boot drive would be shown. Only my to Partitions (bootcamp and mac os x).
Please see screenshoot.

[george1421]

@rtoadmin Hmm that should work (I do have to say I’m ignorant to mac computers). The flash drive needs to be formatted as FAT32 format and efi\boot\bootx64.efi should be all that is needed. I know it works correctly on the Wintel based computers. Could you test that on a wintel based computer (windows and intel) to see if the usb drive is being seen correctly?

Understand FOG doesn’t fully support the ARM based systems just yet.

I do have an updated FOS Linux kernel that has support for the T2 chips patched in we can try once we get the macs to boot from the flash drive. If we can’t get the macs to see that usb drive (easy way) I’ll update an option 2 boot drive.

[RTOadmin]

@george1421 Hi, thank you.

Yes the Macs are Intel based and bootcamp is working. The USB Drive is shown on the boot menu but wont do anything after selecting.

[george1421]

@rtoadmin I was reading an article just recently (not sure why maybe because of this thread) and it mentioned something about secure boot. I thought at the time imac with secure boot that’s interesting… I thought that was a microsoft forced thing.

So from the menu you pick it but nothing happens. Check to see if secure boot is disable in the imac’s firmware. You will need to turn this off to image with fog anyway. See now when you pick the usb drive it boots.
https://www.wikihow.com/Turn-Off-Secure-Boot-on-Mac

If it doesn’t still work, I have a plan B.

[RTOadmin]

@george1421 Hi,
thank you.
Unfortunatly there is no possibility to change the secure boot mode. Only setting firmware Password is available.

[george1421]

@rtoadmin said in Boot into FOG on iMac 18,1 with Boot Image or boot Partition:

Unfortunatly there is no possibility to change the secure boot mode

I don’t understand??

Is there no option or turn off secure boot or is turning it off locked from changing?

[Quazz]

Don’t know if it’s changed since then, but https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10615/ipxe-booting-possibly-broken-on-os-x-sierra-update/ seems relevant

[RTOadmin]

@george1421 Yes, the option to turn off is not shown. Only the option to set a firmware password.

[RTOadmin]

@rtoadmin said in Boot into FOG on iMac 18,1 with Boot Image or boot Partition:

@george1421 Hi, thank you.

Yes the Macs are Intel based and bootcamp is working. The USB Drive is shown on the boot menu but wont do anything after selecting.

Ok thats curious… I tried it on my imac 20,2 27" bought in January 21 and there is the option available.

[george1421]

@rtoadmin OK let me build a usb bootable FOS linux image later today. Lets see if those Macs can see that boot image. I’ll include the kernel for the T2 chip too. I’d like to see if it boots on a Mac.

[RTOadmin]

@george1421 Thank you…

[george1421]

@rtoadmin

The article that describes what to do is here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7727/building-usb-booting-fos-image/21 The image file below will take you to step seven. You should just need to use a program to burn the image to a 512MB flash drive. You can use larger but FOS linux doesn’t need more than 512MB. My general recommendation would be to use rufus on a windows computer to write the image to a usb drive. But balena etcher should work for you. I just have not personally done this with etcher. (writing raspberry pi images to sd cards I have, just not the fos linux boot image) https://www.balena.io/etcher/

The link to the image file is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tq7HAC8F9rO-SI-3FMzKrUPYbXTderC2/view?usp=sharing

[RTOadmin]

@george1421 Thank you very much.

I configured the cfg file to my Fog Server 192.168.1.10

The mac booted into the menu and I choosed opion 1 Cature…

then some acpi errors apears.

Starting syslogd, klogd, sysctl OK

Network interface started and discovered the dhcp with the correct ip of the client
adding dns 192.168.1.2 is also ok
startin sshd ok

and then /tmp/hinfo.txt line 1 invalid command not fond!!!
fuseblk bad value for source
xfs unknown parameter nolock

Fatal Error Unkon request type :: null

Compuzterwill reboot

[george1421]

@rtoadmin said in Boot into FOG on iMac 18,1 with Boot Image or boot Partition:

and then /tmp/hinfo.txt line 1 invalid command not fond!!!

Fatal Error Unkon request type :: null

Actually this is a good thing. The short answer is its working!!

I’m not sure about the first error, it may be related to the second error. The second error is one of the caveats with this system. You need to schedule a task on the FOG server before you pick option 1. Schedule a capture or deploy task first then pick option 1.

The first error might be caused if you don’t have the computer registered with FOG first. If the computer you are trying to image is not listed in FOG’s inventory then it might throw that error. If that is the case from the Grub menu you need to pick one of the register menu items first, then you can schedule a capture or deploy task.

As far as the booting process you can ignore the acpi warning messages at the top. As long as FOS Linux picks up an IP address you are good to go. You are very close to having this work.

[RTOadmin]

Re: [Boot into FOG on iMac 18](1 with Boot Image or boot Partition)

thank you very much.

I registered the client with the fos Linux, created an Image and an image Task.
In the task list the task apears:

If I boot with the provided fos linux and type 1 to capture a image I got the same error as bevor

[george1421]

@rtoadmin I have to think something went wrong with the registration or the mac address doesn’t match for some reason. I think this section of the imaging program needs a bit more in the area of detail why its mad, and not just that its mad at you.

If you are willing to help me out debug this I think we can figure it out pretty quickly. For reference the section of programming where this hostinfo.txt message is displaced is here: https://github.com/FOGProject/fos/blob/fda59eca648af1a38ed57c94f65558221e77534f/Buildroot/board/FOG/FOS/rootfs_overlay/bin/fog#L4 Lines 4 to 10. I don’t expect you to read the program, only this is the part we will debug first.

Leave that existing task running on the FOG server.

USB boot that mac, but this time pick (I think) option 8 debug mode. This should send you to the FOS Linux command prompt.

Key in the following command ip a s That will show you a list of network adapters. One of those network adapters will have an IP address that is valid for your network. Associated with that network adapter with the IP address thats valid for your network, there will be a mac address. Make sure that mac address matches the mac address in the Web UI host definition for this computer (my guess is that the mac address of the computer in the web ui will not match the mac address of the target computer). If it does match then we are going to run these commands.

. /usr/share/fog/lib/funcs.sh
sysuuid=$(dmidecode -s system-uuid)
sysuuid=${sysuuid,,}
mac=$(getMACAddresses)
curl -Lks -o /tmp/hinfo.txt --data "sysuuid=${sysuuid}&mac=$mac" "${web}service/hostinfo.php" -A ''

cat /tmp/hinfo.txt

That was a bit more typing than I hoped. I will tell you a short cut to help debug.

1. We already have the ip address of this debug computer with the ip a s command. Note what that address is
2. On the target computer, lets give root a password wtth passwd. Make it a simple password like hello the password will be reset on the next reboot.
3. Finally from another computer with a windowed UI (mac, windows, linux) you can use putty/ssh to connect to the target computer using the IP address useid root, and password hello from before. This ssh terminal will allow you to copy and paste commands to the FOS Linux engine without having to retype everything.

I’m interested in what that hostinfo.txt file is saying. The cat command will print out what is inside that file. I think it will be a warning message.

[RTOadmin]

@george1421 said in Boot into FOG on iMac 18,1 with Boot Image or boot Partition:

. /usr/share/fog/lib/funcs.sh
sysuuid=$(dmidecode -s system-uuid)
sysuuid=${sysuuid,}
mac=$(getMACAddresses)
curl -Lks -o /tmp/hinfo.txt --data “sysuuid=${sysuuid}&mac=$mac” “${web}service/hostinfo.php” -A ‘’

cat /tmp/hinfo.txt

OK, the MAC Adress is the same as in the Backend

Password change on the client to hello was not allowed because it is to weak.
I tried a longer one it works.
I tried to connect form the linux terminal on the same machine where the fog server is running to connect to the client

I used ssh 192.168.1.112

I have to check that there is no fingerprint, done
After entering the password the password did not match. I tried serveral differnt ones.

If I understand right, I have to run the script with ssh on the form the server?
I tried to enter the code on the client did not work because of there is no such directory.

Have you an idea why my password didnt match?

Thank you very much.

[george1421]

@rtoadmin Understand you should be doing this process on the target computer at the FOS Linux command prompt.

The passwd command might complain about password too short, but since you are root (i.e. linux god) if you enter it again it will accept it.

You can use putty from windows computer or ssh from linux/mac computer. The ssh syntax is ssh root@<ipaddress_of_target> It might come back and say something about remembering the certificate of the server, just answer yes. Then it should prompt you for a password you created.

Understand you can also run the commands directly on the FOS Linux (target computer) console. The ssh route would be just easier to copy and paste.