Could there be some info on a client when "partition outside the disk!"?
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Why not build an image that is SMALLER than your SMALLEST hard drive, that is what the rest of us do.
I rectify this issue by making a chart near my imaging machine and I keep track of the models in production and the hard drive sizes.
It sounds to me like there is already a spot in the PXE menu for such a feature, why do you not want to run it? It’s a compatability check, you should run it on every machine… EVERY MACHINE. It doesn’t matter if it is the same model and motherboard “revision”.
I don’t think that gParted is required, and adding it to the PXE menu should also not be required. This sounds like it can be solved if you would do some research before you attempt to image the machine with FOG.
If you want gParted added in so bad, look into the guides here on the forums on booting an ISO and include it in YOUR PXE menu for your convenience.
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[quote=“pmonstad, post: 31560, member: 17422”]When cloning Windows 7 hosts there are sometimes problems with clients having too small harddisks. The deploy task completes without any warnings on host and the image has not been deployed.
The only way to trouble shoot is to run the client info from the PXE menu. When checking for FOG compatibility a message is shown: “Error: Cant have a partition outside the disk!”
I spent a lot of time finding the source of this problem: harddisk too small compared to the image. I suggest this “error” is shown during the deploy attempt, if possible.
The solution fo me is to run Gparted on the “master” client and then resize the original disk before running a new upload. Could the Gparted package be put in as an option in the PXE menu?[/quote]
Another option to work with is to use the NTFS - Single Disk (Resizable) option. We’ve fixed it so you don’t even have to use Sysprep to use resizable images.
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Dear Mr Driver,
I am fully aware of the solutions you suggests, and I have never ever had any problems fiddling around with FOG or other systems out there. I am not sure about this, but I sometimes feel every comment and suggestion I rise here in the forum seems to make you or other administrators quite upset, at least some of the answers you give are not very friendly. I don’t want to make a flame war about this, but this is how I sometimes read and understand your answers.The idea about such a warning mentioned in the first post is to let newbies find FOG a little more user friendly. Of course I know it makes sense to have an image smaller than the smallest disk in use, but even if my computers are very much the same brands and models, there seems to always be a few computers with a smaller disk (e.g. replacement) than the others.
It took me a long time to find the reason why a computer did not successfully deploy, and when deploying a lot of hosts it is impossible to notice this as there are no warnings at all. The host is even marked as successfully deployed in the GUI. I have several times expected a range of computers to have completed a deployment just to find them back in my office a couple of days later as the user can’t boot the computer.
But of course, if there are no one else in the world who find this necessary I will not struggle much to convince anyone. And excuse me so much for rising the question in the first place.
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[quote=“Tom Elliott, post: 31591, member: 7271”]Another option to work with is to use the NTFS - Single Disk (Resizable) option. We’ve fixed it so you don’t even have to use Sysprep to use resizable images.[/quote]
Tom: will this work with Windows 7 now? If true I guess this is the ultimate solution as this was not a problem in the old Windows XP days. Thanks!
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[quote=“pmonstad, post: 31601, member: 17422”]Tom: will this work with Windows 7 now? If true I guess this is the ultimate solution as this was not a problem in the old Windows XP days. Thanks![/quote]
That’s why I recommended it, yes it is true!
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[quote=“pmonstad, post: 31599, member: 17422”]Dear Mr Driver,
I am fully aware of the solutions you suggests, and I have never ever had any problems fiddling around with FOG or other systems out there. I am not sure about this, but I sometimes feel every comment and suggestion I rise here in the forum seems to make you or other administrators quite upset, at least some of the answers you give are not very friendly. I don’t want to make a flame war about this, but this is how I sometimes read and understand your answers.The idea about such a warning mentioned in the first post is to let newbies find FOG a little more user friendly. Of course I know it makes sense to have an image smaller than the smallest disk in use, but even if my computers are very much the same brands and models, there seems to always be a few computers with a smaller disk (e.g. replacement) than the others.
It took me a long time to find the reason why a computer did not successfully deploy, and when deploying a lot of hosts it is impossible to notice this as there are no warnings at all. The host is even marked as successfully deployed in the GUI. I have several times expected a range of computers to have completed a deployment just to find them back in my office a couple of days later as the user can’t boot the computer.
But of course, if there are no one else in the world who find this necessary I will not struggle much to convince anyone. And excuse me so much for rising the question in the first place.[/quote]
Look it’s nothing personal, you just don’t research before you post. Gparted is an ISO. It is a product that another set of developers works on. I don’t think that adding it to FOG is a good idea, hell we already have a guide on how to boot ISO with PXE menu!
Look at the problems we have already. Most of them stem from not following directions properly. Some of them stem from issues in the OS. I just look at this as another complaint point. “You added this feature and it doesn’t work” “it doesn’t work on this hardware”, etc. Sometimes the issues are simple, and most of the time the solutions are from another forum… that we devs have searched for… and found… I understand that sometimes we syntax things differently than the average user, and that is fine, we do it because we want to.
I don’t think this is a beneficial feature. You seem to think because you have a problem and this accommodation will solve your issues. Tell me, where else other than setting up your image and uploading it to FOG that using Gparted has been a crucial part of your imaging process? I only used gParted once, and that was to include a previously outdated piece of technology. Which by the way there is already an implementation for.
I’ll say it once more. I do not think that this will benefit anyone from including it, that was the point of both of these posts, not to attack you. You are the one that attacks us each time we explain to you, this doesn’t benefit the community. We have included steps as a community so that if you needed to run these tools from PXE menu, you could.
How about this, instead of asking us to do it, you add gParted to your PXE Menu and take notes on how you did it and post in the tutorials section. Then monitor that thread, how many visits you have and problems you have. When you notice a large amount of traffic for that idea, post it as a feature idea. I bet Tom realizes before you do the amount of traffic and implements a feature for it.
Stop reading my comments negatively they are never meant that way, they are meant to be informative.
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[quote=“Jaymes Driver, post: 31603, member: 3582”]
I’ll say it once more. I do not think that this will benefit anyone from including it, that was the point of both of these posts, not to attack you. You are the one that attacks us each time we explain to you, this doesn’t benefit the community. We have included steps as a community so that if you needed to run these tools from PXE menu, you could.How about this, instead of asking us to do it, you add gParted to your PXE Menu and take notes on how you did it and post in the tutorials section. Then monitor that thread, how many visits you have and problems you have. When you notice a large amount of traffic for that idea, post it as a feature idea. I bet Tom realizes before you do the amount of traffic and implements a feature for it.
Stop reading my comments negatively they are never meant that way, they are meant to be informative.[/quote]
Here we go again… My feature request (or more like a wish) was to[B] have a warning when the disk is too small to fit the image[/B]. I know how to solve this when I am aware of the problem, and I mentioned I have used gParted to fix this. I did not request for this to be included in the PXE menu, and YES, I have put ISO things in there myself years ago. As this is a forum my intention is to have some inputs to questions and thoughts raised in the forum. This helps me a lot (and perhaps others as well) as a forum thread is often very helpful. Starting a discussion (that is what a forum is for, right?) does not necessarily mean me or someone else expect developers to shout “hurray” and start coding right away. It is yours choice: find the suggestion good, give some feedback (in a friendly way) or don’t answer at all. The worst thing that could happen is to frighten people to ask questions, telling them they are stupid, lazy etc. I have spent time in the Wiki, and sometimes it is helpful and sometimes it it confusing as the info is outdated compared to the current functionality in FOG. This is no criticism about anyone, it is the nature of a living project like FOG. That is why I (and probably a lot of others) ask a question in the forum: not found in the Wiki, not a clue about where to look, of most often; the nature of a forum - ask a question and hope someone will help you.
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[quote=“pmonstad, post: 31605, member: 17422”]Here we go again… My feature request (or more like a wish) was to[B] have a warning when the disk is too small to fit the image[/B]. I know how to solve this when I am aware of the problem, and I mentioned I have used gParted to fix this. I did not request for this to be included in the PXE menu, and YES, I have put ISO things in there myself years ago. As this is a forum my intention is to have some inputs to questions and thoughts raised in the forum. This helps me a lot (and perhaps others as well) as a forum thread is often very helpful. Starting a discussion (that is what a forum is for, right?) does not necessarily mean me or someone else expect developers to shout “hurray” and start coding right away. It is yours choice: find the suggestion good, give some feedback (in a friendly way) or don’t answer at all. The worst thing that could happen is to frighten people to ask questions, telling them they are stupid, lazy etc. I have spent time in the Wiki, and sometimes it is helpful and sometimes it it confusing as the info is outdated compared to the current functionality in FOG. This is no criticism about anyone, it is the nature of a living project like FOG. That is why I (and probably a lot of others) ask a question in the forum: not found in the Wiki, not a clue about where to look, of most often; the nature of a forum - ask a question and hope someone will help you.[/quote]
This is the problem with the internet, these are just words on a page and anyone can interpret them as they please. I never once said users, or you, were stupid or lazy. I stated that you didn’t do enough research about the disk before you tried to image it. I am not looking for a fight this is the truth.
I do not aim to run off users with questions either. What I do want is the users to use the resources that are currently available to them. As I stated, there is already a place in the menu system that will tell you if the host is capable of imaging and what is going to fail.
It seems that FOG is picking up some steam and some new users and with it come new ideas. Some of them help to simplify a process or some of the add a whole new feature. I must first apologize as I didn’t fully understand your question. I read more into your solution and thought that is what you wanted implemented. Again, I am sorry for my misunderstanding. I think I further understand now.
You’re wanting an alert to display letting the user know that the image is not going to fit on the disk because of it’s size is that correct rather than just “fail” on the disks listing in the compatibility page is that correct?
Next are constructive questions, I’m trying to understand how we can make this better.
Do you think that the compatibility page should be revamped to better depict this information? What ideas do you have?
Or are you wanting the alert to be on the main pxe menu screen with the “Host is registered” message? I think this is something that can only be done after registration though, as an image will need to be assigned to the host before it will know if the hosts disk is the correct size or not.
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[quote=“Jaymes Driver, post: 31691, member: 3582”]
You’re wanting an alert to display letting the user know that the image is not going to fit on the disk because of it’s size is that correct rather than just “fail” on the disks listing in the compatibility page is that correct?Do you think that the compatibility page should be revamped to better depict this information? What ideas do you have?
Or are you wanting the alert to be on the main pxe menu screen with the “Host is registered” message? I think this is something that can only be done after registration though, as an image will need to be assigned to the host before it will know if the hosts disk is the correct size or not.[/quote]
Hi! The way it works now is the deploy starts as expected (single disk, multiple partitions, not resizable (win 7)). If the image is originally uploaded from a larger disk than the disk it now tries to deploy to, there are no warning on the client (I am not at work now so excuse me if I am wrong), except for some fast showing info about the “partition outside disk”. If you run this by remote it is not easy to cope with such an error. When I log into FOG gui the host is shown with the deploy date, and I think all went correct.
As I see the situation there are at least two ways to make it more informative to the administrator: Either stop the process on the client by not rebooting it, showing the message and waiting for some interaction, or not send a “task completed” back to the FOG server. The “task completed” should only be sent if the deploy task really is completed which is not the case here.
I don’t think it is necessary to show a warning about this unless a deploy task is started. As the message “outside disk” exist there is probably already some error checking on the client, so perhaps it could be possible to either pause the client and not send the “task completed” back to the FOG server? Sorry for my rather bad explanation about this.
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[quote=“pmonstad, post: 31745, member: 17422”]
As I see the situation there are at least two ways to make it more informative to the administrator: Either stop the process on the client by not rebooting it, showing the message and waiting for some interaction, or not send a “task completed” back to the FOG server. The “task completed” should only be sent if the deploy task really is completed which is not the case here.[/quote]This one might be a bit of a problem. It sends the “complete” command because it thinks the task is complete. If it didn’t it wouldn’t delete the place holder for the task and it would just boot loop back to do its task again.
I think the idea to pause at the error screen is probably the best route. Unless there is a way to send an “incomplete” command to display the error at the fog server or on the next boot it could pause on a screen explaining the error and waiting for input.
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I think rather than building solutions into fog for this it would be something users need to be aware of and manage themselves.
If their environments have smaller HDDs/SSDs then the sysadmins need to know this and should be aware of it beforehand. I deliberately build my images smaller than the smallest possible HDD in my environment and expand on the client.
or you could use the fixed resizable image.
Dropping an error back to the server is a good idea… unfortunately knowing your environment is probably the best thing to do as it will save you the time of shrinking the image and then re-uploading.
Also not all HDDs the same size are equal… I’ve had a whole room of 80GB HDDs and had one system fail because it’s 80GB HDD wasn’t the same size as the others.
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seems like this would be an appropriate thread to comment …
[url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/partition-size-error-w-raw-download.11013/page-2[/url]@VincentJ … was that 80Gb from a mother/fing Vostro1200? [I hate that model line with a passion]
