Making FOG images from ghosted computers

[Andrew Head]

I’m new to FOG, but not to linux, open source or imaging. We’re looking to migrate either away from ghost entirely or at least compliment what we’ve got and make it much better.

I’ve looked around the forum but haven’t found anything related.

Here’s the problem we’re running into.

In order to get FOG images without having to start over completely, we ghosted a computer and then told FOG to upload an image of it. That goes off without a hitch. However, when we restore it we get the dreaded blinking cursor in the top left hand corner.

We’ve successfully taken and restore images that were built from scratch with no problems. There just seems to be something about taking an image of a ghosted partition that it doesn’t like.

All of our images are spec’ed out as Windows 7, single disk, resizable.
Using FOG 1.2.0 on CentOS 7.1

I’ve looked at the ghosted drives and everything looks normal to me. I’ve tried chkdsk /f, defreg beforehand, windows boot repair after the image was downloaded. Nothing seems to make them work.

Any suggestions? Anyone ever seen this behavior? Anyone know of something that ghost is doing that FOG specifically doesn’t like? Anyone successfully migrated their existing ghost images this way? (which I understand is the only way)

I’ve got plenty of hardware so I can test multiple theories at once…

Thanks!

[Tom Elliott]

I think I know what the problem is.

Do me a favor, if you’re daring, and upgrade to SVN Trunk?

This is because Ghost makes a similar assumption of the partitions as 0.32 of FOG did. I believe you will not have a problem downloading the image to the client systems if you upgrade. If you do have problems we’re always monitoring so I’m sure we can answer quick enough.

[Wayne Workman]

[url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/SVN[/url]

[Andrew Head]

OK. I’ll take a stab at that. Probably be this afternoon before I can make that kind of change. Do you have a recommended path for migration or just re-install?

Also - I’ve just realized where I was in the forum when I click “new post.” Apologies for putting this in the tutorials section.

Thanks for the quick response!

[Wayne Workman]

The installer for the newer developmental versions will upgrade your machine for you.
It will use previous settings, and tell you to visit the Web GUI to update the database. Errors during that can be expected, but are non-impacting. They are related to supporting upgrading from much older FOG versions.

[Andrew Head]

OK. Small glitch. Because I’m using CentOS 7, I’m using MariaDB. I’ve made the same modification indicated in the instruction below to get past the SQL installation failure, but it’s still bombing out. Suggestions?

[url]http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Installation_on_CentOS_7#Mariadb_.28optional.29[/url]

Thanks!

[Wayne Workman]

For the record, I’ve gone through this before.

We used Ghost prior to FOG. I deployed our Ghost images one by one, updating them, and then taking new FOG images.

And, without the developmental versions, FOG wouldn’t work in my environment.

I haven’t gone back.

[Wayne Workman]

[quote=“Andrew Head, post: 45251, member: 29323”]OK. Small glitch. Because I’m using CentOS 7, I’m using MariaDB. I’ve made the same modification indicated in the instruction below to get past the SQL installation failure, but it’s still bombing out. Suggestions?

[url]http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Installation_on_CentOS_7#Mariadb_.28optional.29[/url]

Thanks![/quote]

We need specifics. What errors, exactly?

[Andrew Head]

Sorry. It looks lime I’m running into an issue with 1.3.0 requiring some specific MySQL components that MariaDB is not providing… I’ve attached the shell capture.

Can you tell me about your process moving your ghost images to fog? If there’s something that I can do to each machine in order to migrate the images, I’m happy to do that.

Some sort of work around?

Thanks for all the assistance!

[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1857_fog-error.txt?:”]fog-error.txt[/url]

[Wayne Workman]

Is there a particular reason you chose CentOS to install FOG on? I’m not bashing or anything, it’s just that probably a lot of us are unfamiliar with it…
I myself use Fedora, most FOG users use Ubuntu.

What version of Apache do you have installed? [url]http://nixcraft.com/showthread.php/15187-Find-apache-version-linux[/url]

Also, this MAY or MAY NOT solve your issue…

Note that the link below says:
[B][SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]Provides :[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE][/B]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]webserver[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]mod_dav[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]httpd-suexec[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]httpd-mmn[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]httpd-mmn[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]httpd-mmn[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]httpd[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#000000]httpd(x86-64)[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[url]http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/29072029/dir/centos_7/com/httpd-2.4.6-31.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm.html[/url]

[Wayne Workman]

The easiest (and probably only) way to migrate a Ghost image to a FOG image is to deploy the ghost image to the target hardware, boot it up a few times to make sure everything is good, and then take a FOG image from it.

A side note is that you are using re-sizable disks… I’ve never used that option. I always use “Multiple partition, single disk, not resizeable” and under partitions, I choose “Everything”

I recommend 7 for your compression setting.

[Andrew Head]

[quote=“Wayne Workman, post: 45266, member: 28155”]Is there a particular reason you chose CentOS to install FOG on? I’m not bashing or anything, it’s just that probably a lot of us are unfamiliar with it…
I myself use Fedora, most FOG users use Ubuntu.
[/quote]

I’m an old school redhat guy that came up through RedHat 4 in the 90s through the switch to RHEL and CentOS to save on costs but still support corporate software requirements. It was just easier to keep up with one distro over 20 years…

[quote=“Wayne Workman, post: 45266, member: 28155”]
What version of Apache do you have installed? [url]http://nixcraft.com/showthread.php/15187-Find-apache-version-linux[/url]
[/quote]

Server: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) PHP/5.4.16

[Andrew Head]

[quote=“Wayne Workman, post: 45268, member: 28155”]The easiest (and probably only) way to migrate a Ghost image to a FOG image is to deploy the ghost image to the target hardware, boot it up a few times to make sure everything is good, and then take a FOG image from it.

A side note is that you are using re-sizable disks… I’ve never used that option. I always use “Multiple partition, single disk, not resizeable” and under partitions, I choose “Everything”

I recommend 7 for your compression setting.[/quote]

The different discussions I’ve read seemed to point towards using Single Disk resizable for Windows 7. I’m obviously open to changing that. Especially if it will fix my problem for the previously ghosted partitions.

If you’re doing “not resizeable” how do you combat the issue of different hard drive sizes?

Thanks!

[Wayne Workman]

[quote=“Andrew Head, post: 45295, member: 29323”]The different discussions I’ve read seemed to point towards using Single Disk resizable for Windows 7. I’m obviously open to changing that. Especially if it will fix my problem for the previously ghosted partitions.

If you’re doing “not resizeable” how do you combat the issue of different hard drive sizes?

Thanks![/quote]

… Our hard drives are not different sizes.

I maintain an image for each model that we have, and we don’t mix-match computers in our labs.

[Wayne Workman]

Under the “Partitions” option, are you choosing “Everything” ??

That’d explain your blinky cursor if it were not correct.

[Joseph Hales]

If your not running SVN running fixparts on the pc before uploading may fix your issue.