Switching to Gpxelinux

[Tom Elliott]

The advanced option under the Pxe Menu settings from the FOG Configuration link. There are some caveats as you’ll have to format the init and kernel lines to match that of the /var/www/fog/lib/fog/BootMenu.class.php. Do not edit eh BootMenu.class.php unless you understand exactly what it’s doing. It’s pretty touchy about syntax for the Boot system to work. I can help you with it more if you need.

[mecsr]

I see that now. What would the syntax for that be for booting from an image from a folder at
http://[I]fogIP[/I]/fog/service/ipxe/images/[I]image.iso[/I]

How do I know whether or not it’s imaging with http? Is that the default of iPxe or is there some other setting I still need to do?

And is it normal for everything on the server to slow down tremendoulsy when imaging one computer, I feel like that shouldn’t be the case.

Sorry to bombard you with questions, and thank you for your helpful answers.

Thanks,
-JJ

[Tom Elliott]

It’s no problem at all.

Imaging doesn’t happen through http. That we’re still using nfs/ftp combination. However:
Loading of image files (init.xz/bzImage/ISO’s) are loaded into memory over http by default with iPXE. It also givves us the ability to be dynamic with our stuff which is part of why we switched.

I’ll look up how to load ISO’s through ipxe so I can give a more concrete answer to your questions.

You could, potentially, just load the memdisk followed by the stuff. I think for the Advanced you’d want something along the lines of:
initrd /images/mxp14.iso\n
chain /memdisk iso raw\n

You may have to download a memdisk and place it service/ipxe, but the above code should work fine.

[Tom Elliott]

of course you may need to add menus and stuff as well which you can see examples on ipxe.org site.

[Tom Elliott]

:MENU
menu
item example1 Boot to disk
item example2 Iso Boot
item example3 Example Text 3
:example1
sanboot --no-describe --drive 0x80 || goto MENU
:example2
kernel memdisk iso raw
initrd win764.iso
boot || goto MENU
:example3
kernel memdisk iso raw
initrd win8-164.iso
boot || goto MENU
autoboot

This is an example of how you can add menus to the system. Please update to the latest revision to make things work properly.

Now this assumes that the win764.iso and win8-164.iso are loaded in {FOGWEBDIR}/service/ipxe/

[mecsr]

Thank you very much.
I updated to the latest release and gave that a try.
It didn’t get to the menu I created with that example. It tried to load a background from a 10.0.7.1 (Or something like that) address and then went back to the original menu with an all blue background. I can’t find a setting anywhere that points to that address.

I’m giving the partclone a try on a rather large image (~250 GB) and it’s going slower than it had before. ~900 MB/min instead of ~1.3 GB/min. Though the first smaller partition uploaded in seconds at a speed of ~5 GB/min. Do you know of anyway to set up imaging through http, I understand it’s much faster. I haven’t found any working tutorials just yet.

Though ultimately, I’m just happy it’s working again, and with iPxe and everything. Thanks for all your help.

-JJ

[Tom Elliott]

r1536 released, should fix the picture callup issue as I just copied pasted from the main scripts of one that was already processed. It should be fixed now. Thank you,

[mecsr]

Also, is there anyway to make the updates for .33 releases smoother.
For example the default webroot on ubuntu 14.04 is /var/www/html and I have the move the folder everytime. And I have to add in the mysql password in a few spots. I tried putting some of the settings in the /opt/fog/.fogsettings but it didn’t seem to work for everything.

Should I be posting this stuff in a different forum post, it seems to have gone rather off topic from the gPxe/iPxe setup stuff.

Thanks,
-JJ

Also, you sir Tom Elliott, are a superhero.

[Junkhacker]

ubuntu 14.04 is quite new and we’re still finding all it’s little quirks. the install is very smooth on most of the prior releases of ubuntu and a few other distros, requiring only the edit to the single config file for the sql password.

regarding the earlier question of speeding up the uploads, if you lower the FOG_PIGZ_COMP it can go much faster at the cost of a little more disk space.

and yes, there are probably more appropriate threads to post any other issues at this point

[mecsr]

In case anyone was reading this and hoping for an answer to making ubuntu 14.04 (Or any other distro really) Fog 0.33b svn updates easier, smoother, and automated even, I figured out how to do it and put it in a new thread linked below, enjoy

[url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/automating-fog-0-33b-svn-updates-in-ubuntu-14-04-with-cron-easily-adapted-to-other-linux-distros.10409/#post-26438[/url]