Question about partitions

[loutrage]

Hello !

I made some searchs on the forum but I didn’t find an answer.

Since several years, I’m using fog and everything works great. Now, I would like upgrade the machines that I deploy. There will be a bigger hard drive of 2TB and I would like partitionate this hard drive.

So with Gparted I created 2 partitions, one of 150GB for Windows (the “C:”) and a second partition of 1.850GB for the Datas (the “D:”).

When I deployed my image, the 2 partitions have been deleted and merged in one partition of 2TB.

Is it possible to deploy with Fog only the “windows” partition and let empty the second partition for the datas ?

If yes, how can I do this ?

Thank you !

[george1421]

@loutrage First lets start out by what you explained, should not happen in FOG. While its technically possible to do, FOG isn’t programmed to combine partitions. FOG should copy exactly what you have to make the cloned machine match exactly. I realize that if your source image was on a 2TB disk and you moved to a 1.5TB disk the sizing should be readjusted but it should not merge the partitions.

So lets start by collecting how you have fog setup.

1. What version of FOG are you using?
2. What version of the FOS Linux kernel are you using (FOG WebUI->FOG Configuration->Kernel update
3. On the FOG server’s linux console change into the /images/<image_name> diretory. Run the following commands and capture the output
   cat d1.partitions
d1.fixed_size_partitions
cat d1.original.fstypes

[loutrage]

First, thank you for the answer.

Here is the asked information :

1. Version 1.5.9
2. There are 2 different Kernell : 5.15.19 & 5.10.71
3. d1.partitions

/dev/sda1 : start=        2048, size=      204800, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, uuid=D57F2E27-A01D-4621-A62D-84C9FC80B3D4, name="EFI system partition", attrs="GUID:63"
/dev/sda2 : start=      206848, size=       32768, type=E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE, uuid=C9EDEEE3-CCA6-4108-B0CF-B76FBD7F80D5, name="Microsoft reserved partition", attrs="GUID:63"
/dev/sda3 : start=      239616, size=   103579136, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=1836C411-18F3-45C4-9179-17AD54B3AC73, name="Basic data partition"
/dev/sda4 : start=   103818752, size=     1038336, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=028C2351-938F-4BA8-9C3D-402B7CE9C09D, attrs="RequiredPartition GUID:63"

d1.fixed_size_partitions

1:2:4

cat d1.original.fstypes

/dev/sda3 ntfs

[george1421]

@loutrage said in Question about partitions:

There are 2 different Kernell : 5.15.19 & 5.10.71

OK I guessed that the kernel update page had the current version displayed.

Lets run this command from the FOG Server command windows.

file /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage

It should return the following

/var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage: Linux kernel x86 boot executable bzImage, version 5.15.19 (buildkite-agent@Tollana) #1 SMP Thu Feb 3 15:10:05 CST 2022, RO-rootFS, swap_dev 0x8, Normal VGA

In this case on my production server I’m running 5.15.19.

If you look at the output from the d1.partitions file I only see 4 partitions. 3 are windows support partitions and one is the C drive. So unless the D drive is on a different hard drive this image only has one partition.

[loutrage]

The version of the kernel is version 4.19.145

Indeed, on my image there is only one partition. I’m working with virtual environment and the image that I capture comes from a virtual machine with a virtual hard drive of 200GB

[george1421]

@loutrage said in Question about partitions:

4.19.145

Ok there is some value to get the latest hardware support to upgrade fos linux kernel to 5.15.71. That will not help your problem here, but its best to get the latest linux kernel.

So your image only contains one partition. So I must be misunderstanding your problem then. FOG is working as designed as far as I can tell, but it sounds like its not working as you need it. Can you explain what I’m missing.

[loutrage]

@george1421

Indeed my image contains one partition (in fact, 3 with the “windows system” partition). The computers “target” have a hard drive of 2TB and the purpose is to separate this hard drive in two, one partition for Windows and one partition for Datas.

Yesterday I deployed the image on 20 computers and after that, I have manually shrink the Windows partition on each computer to create a “D:” partition. It was a long job and perhaps there is a solution to automate this step

[george1421]

@loutrage What you need to do is capture an image with 2 partitions to start with. FOG is only giving you what you captured. As far as I know it can’t capture a windows disk with just a C drive and then have the cloned computer have a C and D drive. So you need to go back to your golden image and make it have a C and D drive and then clone with single disk resizable.

[loutrage]

@george1421

Ok ! Thank you for the answer