Newbie to imagin Mac's and pxe booting in general
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Hi,
I have been attempting to glean information from the wiki regarding pxe booting a score or so of late 000’s and pre-teens (2011,12) Macs, I have a couple Imacs core 2 duos that I would like to image with mxlinux using FOG. And my newer MacBookPros (i series intels) with kubuntu. Currently, I’m just a step above sneaker net ( I image 4 or 5 ssd’d and install them along with 8GB of ram).
From perusing this topic and the wiki, it looks coplicated. I have two configurations, my home lab uses my verizon 3100 to provide dhcp services and my work setup which has fog providing dhcp on its own subnet. Both are running as ubuntu server VMs on Proxmox.
Is there at least a straight forward way to configure something like this? I am trying to get my feet under me regarding setting this up.
tia.
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I read this link and it display some code that modifies dhcp server to pxe boot mac’s. Only I don’t know what that file is. The wiki post doesn’t let on (or I just utterly missed it).
[https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=FOG_on_a_MAC#fancy](link url)
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I have Picture of a failed pxe boot of a MBP9,2
Intel Core i5 3210M @2.50GHz
8 GB RAM
128GB SSD -
@Mr_____T First let me say I don’t have a clue when it comes to imaging macs. The last time I touched one was in the mid 90s.
But from working on the FOG Forums I know that people are able to image the older ones with FOG. The introduction of the T2 chip caused some issues but I was able to compile a patched version of FOS Linux to allow imaging to work there too.
Looking at your error screen I see several promising clues. iPXE is running and it can see the nic because it can see the mac address of the nic. It doesn’t appear to see the PHY interface because unless you didn’t plug in the network cable, its waiting for the link up to continue.
Did you get iPXE to run by pxe booting or usb boot drive?
I did notice that iPXE is pretty old (circa 2019). You probably want to get the latest version, yes I know you are working with old hardware.
That also raises the question, what version of FOG are you using.
Just to be clear the issue is between iPXE and the network, you haven’t got to FOS Linux bit yet. That may be the next milestone you will need to pass.
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@george1421 Hi,
Thanks for your reply. Its strange. I am working with (almost exclusively) early 2012 hardware. My older Imacs 2009-2011 afaict pxe boot fine image with FOG w/o issue. The problem comes along when, I try to image our macbooks. They display different levels of progress before they flat out hang. I had one mbpx,y I’m almost sure it was a 3rd gen intel just can’t find it right now. I may be being processed to go out the door to our clients.
Yes the 2019 verison of ipxe was executed from a boot of clonezill 3.1.x the version I would attempt to boot from ventory stick or from an imaged usb stick would display an error regarding not having efi capability and/or hang or return to the ventoy menu. If I just let them be long enough the MBP would just restart.
So I did attempted to roll my own and ran into the same problem with the oobox downloadable iso/zip file. Hang… I am researching w/o much success with how clonezilla compiled their ipxe menu entry or how to just plain add efi capability to ipxe.iso/zip and burn it to a usb stick. I just am not knowledable enough to formulate a good question or find what I am looking for (cause I don’t know:))
So thanks again for your reply. I have a large donations of older MBP’s coming just before the holidays and I would lik to be able to make it rain.
Regards,
