Imaging Dell Optiplex (7000 / 7080 models)
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Hello,
I am a tech at a K12 district and am needing some assistance
with imaging Dell machines that use fake RAIDS (UEFI only) to use Windows 11. I have gotten FOG to work with other fake RAID devices by disabling other drives and using AHCI mode. However, these particular models do not work with this workaround.With some setups I can get FOG to deploy to the respective drive setup at the time, however, the Dell is not able to boot from it. When going into the Dell interface, it will not allow me to select the drive(s) as a boot option, even though the drive shows NTFS partitions when using lsblk.
STEPS I’VE TRIED:
- Setting machine to AHCI instead of RAID ON.
- Disabling secure boot / TPM.
- Using the /dev/md126 / mdraid=true arguments in the web GUI
- Pulling up the device’s fake RAID with /proc/mdstat (doesn’t show anything).
- Disabling all but one SSD in the machine, then imaging to that and setting
the host main disk to whatever appears in lsblk (i.e. /dev/nvme0n1) - Disabling all drives, then attaching USB external storage to image to. Other machines can boot into the imaged USB, but the Optiplex does not even allow it to be selected.
FOG SERVER INFORMATION
- It’s running on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
- FOG version is 1.5.10
- Kernel version was 5.15.93 (uname -a)
IMAGE INFORMATION
- The image is 20GB in size, and is set to be used as
“single-disk, resizable” - The image is verified to work on other machines.
Any ideas? I’m at a loss and would rather avoid having to USB install an entire lab of computers.
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@iljared98 The problem here is raid-on + uefi + linux. There is no known driver for raid-on mode with uefi and linux. You need raid-on mode for the intel raid controller to work for the fake raid.
For full disclosure I have not tested the intel hardware accelerated raid with the 6.x linux kernel yet.
Now if you change one of the settings you will be able to image. Something you can try. I know this works, but I have not tried it recently or with your hardware. If you have a uefi image, you can capture and deploy that image using a bios based computer, as long as the first boot is in uefi mode of the target system. So the idea here is to pxe boot the computer from the Dell boot manager in bios mode (CSM mode needs to be enabled in the bios). Deploy your image to the raid disks in bios mode and see what that gives you. Now I’m suggesting that you leave the computer in uefi mode with raid-on just from the boot manager pxe boot in bios mode (hopefully that is still an option). Upon a reboot after imaging the computer will remain in uefi mode and for the OS first boot it will be in uefi mode.
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@george1421
For the 7080 it doesn’t have CSM mode unlike other Dell hardware I’ve had to image. I’ll give the latest 6.x kernel a shot and see how it works with one of them when I’m back in the office tomorrow.
