FOG Project Image Capture on Raspberry Pi 4 (ARM64) via U-Boot

[Jeremy]

Hello, the goal of using FOG Project at the company where I work is to capture an image of a Raspberry Pi 4 that is already configured (with SSH, Wi-Fi, locale, and keyboard settings enabled).

I haven’t been able to find a topic to help me set this up; for now, I am relying on Gemini and Claude for assistance.

Project Overview:
I am trying to capture an image from a Raspberry Pi 4 (2 GB RAM) to a FOG Project server (v1.5.10). The Pi 4 uses an external 512 GB JMicron SSD/USB drive connected to an USB 3.0 port (/dev/sda).

What has been done and validated so far:

PXE / TFTP Chainloading: The Raspberry Pi 4 successfully boots via native PXE, loads U-Boot, and downloads via TFTP the boot.scr script, the bzImageARM64 kernel, the uInitrd ramdisk, and the bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb DTB file

Network Driver Issue Resolved: The default FOG bzImageARM64 kernel lacked support for the Pi 4’s onboard Broadcom NIC. I replaced it with the official Raspberry Pi ARM64 kernel (kernel8.img / 6.18.46-v8+).

Hardware Detection:

The native Broadcom Ethernet controller (bcmgenet) initializes properly (eth0: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full).

An IP address is assigned via DHCP (udhcpc: lease of 192.168.203.73 obtained).

The external storage drive is properly detected at /dev/sda (JMicron drive with sda1 and sda2 partitions).

Current boot.cmd Configuration (U-Boot):

setenv kernel_addr_r 0x00080000
setenv kernel_comp_addr_r 0x0a000000
setenv kernel_comp_size 0x02000000
setenv fdt_addr_r 0x02600000
setenv ramdisk_addr_r 0x03000000

setenv bootargs console=tty1 root=/dev/ram0 rw ramdisk_size=275000 web=192.168.203.113/fog/ loglevel=7 mode=debug type=up mac=dc:a6:32:c8:b4:33 osid=50 img=ImagePi4 storage=192.168.203.113:/images/ storageip=192.168.203.113 imgType=mps imgPartitionType=all storagedev=/dev/sda

tftp ${kernel_addr_r} 7efcf632/bzImageARM64
tftp ${ramdisk_addr_r} 7efcf632/uInitrd
tftp ${fdt_addr_r} 7efcf632/bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb

booti ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r} ${fdt_addr_r}

Current Issue:
During the FOS Linux kernel boot, the process hangs right after displaying the network link line (bcmgenet fd580000.ethernet eth0: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control rx/tx) and does not automatically proceed to the FOG init scripts / check-in process (/bin/fog.checkin).

Has anyone successfully automated a full FOS capture workflow on ARM64 / Raspberry Pi 4 architecture?

[Tom Elliott]

@Jeremy FOS apparently hasn’t been great with Raspberry Pi.

I’m working on building in proper support and fixing a bug we found along the way (Yes I’m using AI to help with the coding and finding/implementing piece.)

I’ll need you, once this refactoring is done and an experimental build is built to test that kernel/init pair to be able to know if what we added/supposedly fixed is working.

Thank you for letting us know.

[Jeremy]

@Tom-Elliott

Thanks a lot for your feedback; I’ve been trying to get it working for a week without success, and your reply confirms that the issue isn’t on my end.

I’d be more than happy to help once you’ve found the solution.