My Fog wish list

[jenesis]

My Fog wish list
1.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]Create color deference between a windows agent “F” icon who has successful connection with a server to [COLOR=#70ad47]Green [/COLOR]as of a disconnected service agent with [COLOR=red]Red[/COLOR].
2.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]One password to rule them all, TFTP, Fog management , fog web login and whatever can cause a permission issue
3.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]When changing image location in fog , Automatic Mounting test will take place , if it fails , it will mount the folder as needed.
4.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT][U]A connection test wizard[/U] will be one of the options in the fog client menu, which of course will test mounting, permissions to read/write whatever Is necessary for a successful operation.
5.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]When setting fog server to an old machine (P4) – fog_PIG_Z_COMP will default to 2 or 3 (~ 30 minutes image windows 8.1 taking on 100 M/b ) rather then 9 ( ~ two hours)
6.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]Errors with logs anywhere connected to fog will be consolidated [FONT=Arial]/[/FONT]centralized to one easy error log file with a link to the relevant file[FONT=Arial]/[/FONT]service related to it for easy troubleshooting.

Feel free to add more of your choice,
I will probably add some more later

[U]Thanks to all the developers for making this vital project available to us all.[/U]

J.

[Tom Elliott]

1.) Interesting idea, and may be possible down the road. Only problem I see with this is that the information is on request nature. There’s no “established” line of communication. The Client makes, essentially, web requests for the information it needs. So this may be possible, but only when it hit’s it’s check in time.

2.) If only it where that easy. Really, the “security” issue would be in the FTP/TFTP password. The fog web login, while I’ve settled back on the idea of it, can be set so you can make your own “user” based access controls, so other Web Login’s have specific access rights. Storage Management username and password falls under the same lines as the FTP/TFTP as it’s used to “FTP” the data from the master to the other nodes. So there’s really only two passwords to remember, and with that, there’s only the one to “remember” because the installer generates the FTP User password for you. Only time you need to “remember” is when adding nodes.

3.) I don’t understand. You mean if you’re trying to change from say /images to /newdisk/images, you want the system to mount? I think it’s more of a user issue at this point. How can we “automount” a non-existent folder? With that, because you changed it, how do we know /images exists if /newdisk/images fails? What if both /images and /newdisk/images no longer exists? What do we automatically mount there?

4.) Back to number one I guess. What do you mean? Right now, when a task is scheduled, FOG already checks if the image exists in the case of download tasks. FOG, in svn, also checks if the image is protected if you’re attempting to do an upload task. If either of these things fail during task creation, the task will not be generated. Is this what you’re referring to?

5.) The only time fog_PIG_Z_COMP is used, is during upload. So if this is what you’re referring to, how often do you upload images anyway? I’m not going to try taking guesses as to what system you’re running has. That’s completely up to you. If you’re using such an old system to build your windows 8.1 image, aren’t you asking for problems? If you don’t mind the space lost due to a lower compression rating, wouldn’t it behoove you to have the same value for all systems? If the increase is so great on an older system, I imagine you’d see a similar result for newer systems.

6.) While not impossible, it’s also not easy to do this. We can make it simple to do on the relevant fog server to make a set of files in the /var/log folder rather than in the /opt/fog/log folder. I used to just create a symbolic link to the folder so I could troubleshoot. This may be a simpler approach to adding into the installer. However, when it comes to “consolidating” files, this is not a very simple thing to accomplish because things become full and write at their own discretion. For example, apache error logs and mysql error logs write to their own things which I’m not going to try redirecting. FOG Services (FOGImageReplicator, FOGScheduler, and FOGMulticastManager) need their own log files as well, as they do very different things and run on their own check schedules. Imagine a “common” file for all of these services. Things would be easily lost in a singular file. Add to that, if we linked other nodes to the same location?

I don’t mind feature requests, but I do request if you’re asking for things in such a manner, try to understand the current methods and approaches and maybe a WHY they are the way the are?

Asking for features is simple, but asking means you’re wanting something. You may realize that some of the things might happen, and others wont, but the things that won’t happen might be the very things you’re really really hoping for (hence the request in the first place.) I’m just hoping to give some understanding as to why some things are the way they are. If new things come up that make these things possible, I’ll see about including it.

[jenesis]

Thanks Tom for answering, I am truly honored just by this.
Here is my humble response
1.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]I had the fog windows client installed on xp , and when I was scheduling task for immediate image making , it rebooted on its own to start the process ,on windows 8.1 that didn’t happen so I figured something was blocking the connection between fog server and the client, that’s why I thought about a visible “handshake " something to tell me if the connection is made or not.
2.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]Clarifying this matter is essential, because the first thing I did was to change the management password to my login password , because hey it’s the same username how come the password is different ?.. so I guess to continue my line of thought the username for internal fog staff (FTP/TFTP and others ) should be different from the default web user login , say “fogftp” or “lighthouse” or whatever… Just as long as it doesn’t confuse us innocent users…
3.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]”[FONT=Tahoma]How can we “automount” a non-existent folder?[/FONT]" that’s exactly my point , fog server should verify the existing of the path , and if something fails , it should [U]deny[/U] the change of it , Now I can click Update , and no verification takes place. Of course this is the responsibility of the user , but at least it should notify there is something wrong
4.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT][FONT=Tahoma]“FOG already checks if the image exists in the case of download tasks. … of these things fail during task creation, the task will not be generated. Is this what you’re referring to?[/FONT]” No , I had to manually change the image folder permissions and mount it things I only found out after I got “access denied” error and mounting error later on. I expect fog to check these things for me . but then again perhaps it[FONT=Arial]'[/FONT]s just me.
5.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT]This is my test machine, once I get it up and runging , I am planning to install it on another machine. So that can be more of a notification then a feature request per say
6.[FONT=Times New Roman] [/FONT] I meant to [U]fish out[/U] just the errors not all the logs , I am aware this is not easy , perhaps an easier thing would be a red flag inside the web interface showing something went wrong , and when clicking it a window will open with the error details.

Thank you very much for you referring to my note , I am sure if I was a Linux Guru
I wouldn’t write half of these things, but as u can imagine, I am not [FONT=Wingdings]J[/FONT]

May the force be with you , Always.
J.