Image Deployment Issues

[AngryITGuy]

Have been using Fog for a couple of years now and it has been working flawlessly for us until a couple of days ago.

Fog is installed on Ubuntu via the git method, Fog is running version 1.5.10.11 with kernel 5.15.93 and we use the ipxe.efi boot file

Got a couple of Stone laptops that refused to boot in to Windows after being imaged, thought the issue was down to the kernel so it was updated to 6.12.35

After the kernel update we were unable to deploy an image at all, reverted back to the original kernel but the problem persists.

When trying to deploy an image we get the following errors

Could not select: Exec error (https://ipxe.org/2e008081)
Could not boot: Exec format error (https://ipxe.org/2e008081)
Could not boot: Exec format error (https://ipxe.org/2e008081)
Chainloading failed

We can check in to the Fog Menu when we PXE boot with a client, allowing us to register, delete and inventory a host but we can’t seem to deploy an image.

Has anyone seen this issue before and able to offer some much needed advice to resolve the issue please?

Thanks

[AngryITGuy]

I have done some additional troubleshooting and changing the boot file to snponly.efi didn’t work but turning secure boot off got things working again.

We have always been able to image with secure boot enabled, as I have inherited this setup I assume my predecessor has followed this guide to configure Fog with secure boot

I am sure I have updated the kernel previously without issue so what have I done wrong this time?

[Tom Elliott]

@AngryITGuy The iPXE file likely needs the boot shim or whatever to allow things to work correctly and with upgrades this isnt’ really feasible as every newly built ipxe file (snp.efi, snponly.efi, etc…) would need that shim configured and installed in place.

It’s possible there was a step in the original installer from your collegue that may have moved the ipxe files from a backup where these were shimmed appropriately?

I don’t know exactly just spitballing.

Ultimately, yes, I’m glad you got this working by disabling secure boot.

Technically, it’s possible to do this with secure boot, but not in an easily scalable way that we can include as part of the install script. Nor, in reality, do I think we want to do such a thing. While it’d be nice to do it as an installer, I am hoping we can get a document that more clearly details what steps to do. This is mainly due to the constantly changing nature of fog, so if we have an easily repeatable knowledgebase on what steps to do in a well documented sort of way, it’d be a lot better than trying to have us maintain some installer that could easily have some issue on a new iteration and continually have to maintain yet more blocks of potentially os dependent code.