Isolated Fog Server Removing M.2 From UEFI Bios
-
Hello everyone I’m brand new here and I cant seem to find anyone with the issues I have.
Currently I have a server running without internet connection and its sole purpose is to push a image to new devices before they enter production.
I have no issues with the capture and deployment of images on the server and devices connected but the problems arise afterward.
After the image is done being pushed to the device I double check everything is there and shutdown the device and add it to my production network and try to boot the device.
Once its removed from the server and I restart the device it no longer boots and the M.2 SSD that has the image doesn’t show up in the bios options.
It will boot perfectly fine after I reconnect it to the server but does not have the M.2 as a option in bios.
I just need the server to push the image and allow me to boot from the M.2 SSD afterwards to avoid hrs of manual setup. If there’s a setting that I’m missing please let me know. -
@Sebastian-Roth Ok so I found a fix for single boot. By a chance several of the devices worked after a complete reimage and have no issues. The other devices that still had issues had a slightly more strenuous issue.
Install Iso Image Via USB:
Windows 11 and Windows 10 (Version 1709 and newer):
Rebuild the BCD store.First run the command below to back up the old BCD:
ren BCD BCD.bak
Now re-create it using this command:
bcdboot c:\Windows /s <boot letter>: /f ALL (You can add a switch before /s for the computer locale: /l <language code>. By default, /l en-us English USA is used.)
bootrec /rebuildbcd
-
@Baden-Skates said in Isolated Fog Server Removing M.2 From UEFI Bios:
… shutdown the device and add it to my production network and try to boot the device.
Once its removed from the server and I restart the device it no longer boots and the M.2 SSD that has the image doesn’t show up in the bios options.Welcome to the forums!
I am not sure I understand the steps involved when you move a deployed machine to the production network. What do you exactly mean by “removed”? Deleting it from the FOG web UI? I don’t think there is anything wrong in what you do but I tend to try and make sure we unterstand the situation correctly.
My rough guess here is that the machines boot nicely into Windows
when booted from network (PXE) because rEFInd is loaded via PXE and that is able to find the installation and boot it up.You need to know that FOG does not care about or mess with the EFI boot entries so far. Some EFI firmware simply finds an installed Windows
and will boot it no problem. But if this is not working out of the box you need to add some postinstall magic script to manipulate the EFI boot entries for you: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/16703/dual-boot-2-disks-unable-to-boot-grub -
@Sebastian-Roth Ok so ill try explain myself a little better. The fog servers whole job (hope) is to push a basic Windows 11 image to a new device with all our apps (office chrome etc) then after the push its unplugged from the fog server and plugged into the internet to finalize our setup needs. After setup would be completed it would go out to a user on the network.
I wont go into details of why the fog server cant be on the network but its simply not a option. So registering devices in the web ui has no benefit to me and is normally skipped to strait deploy the image on the computer.
The current problem is that after I unplug it from the server and restart the device it no longer has the M.2 SSD as a boot option. The only choices it has are UEFI IPV4/IPV6 PXE. The missing M.2 SSD is a reoccurring issues with 11 consecutive devices losing the M.2 SSD Boot option. All 11 devices including the one the image was pulled from are identical in parts make and model so there is next to no variation with that.
The link you sent seems to be fixes for duel booting which I’m not doing but if I missed something crucial in there please let me know.
Long story short I’m losing my onboard drive and can not boot the device without being connected to the fog server.
-
@Baden-Skates said in Isolated Fog Server Removing M.2 From UEFI Bios:
Long story short I’m losing my onboard drive and can not boot the device without being connected to the fog server.
You don’t actually loose the drive as you would not be able to boot form it when it’s connected to the FOG server network… Makes sense?
What I am saying is that FOG does not create EFI boot entries for you and that some UEFI firmware is not behaving “favorable” when cloning systems (instead of doing a plain OS install).
While the topic posted is about dual booting it might still help in your situation because it explains how to let FOG create EFI boot entries for you: https://forums.fogproject.org/post/151757
-
@Sebastian-Roth Ok so I found a fix for single boot. By a chance several of the devices worked after a complete reimage and have no issues. The other devices that still had issues had a slightly more strenuous issue.
Install Iso Image Via USB:
Windows 11 and Windows 10 (Version 1709 and newer):
Rebuild the BCD store.First run the command below to back up the old BCD:
ren BCD BCD.bak
Now re-create it using this command:
bcdboot c:\Windows /s <boot letter>: /f ALL (You can add a switch before /s for the computer locale: /l <language code>. By default, /l en-us English USA is used.)
bootrec /rebuildbcd
-
[[undefined-on, S Sebastian Roth, ]]