Boot Problem with restoring image to HP Z Series (Z230) & Clonezillia IPXE Boot

[Trixsta101]

Hi

We have about 75 new Hp Z230 and would like to use fog…

Fog 1.2.0

Problem:

I setup a z230 with RAID1 (2x 1TB)
Installed windows 7x64 & patch
Run Fog Prep & upload image.
Fog image setting: multiple partition image single disk ( not resizable) & All tried ALL DISKS

Image uploads fine… Deploying it to another machine i get this: Degraded raid1 and it wont boot.

If i run bootrec /rebuild bcd it will boot windows… Then my problem is the RAID1, soon as i select the second drive and say rebuild it wont boot and its need to boot windows to start rebuild.

I would like to multicast deploy this image and need to do with without affecting the raid1!

[Wayne Workman]

Can you try NOT using FOG prep, and re-upload?

Also, you might have better luck with FOG Trunk. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/SVN

[Tom Elliott]

@Trixsta101 Based on what I’m reading, the systems are your average (more or less) consumer grade desktops? They’re mounting the disk as a RAID volume, before the OS sees them?

FOG is technically capable, as you’re seeing, of imaging these types of setups, but I think the problem isn’t the RAID directly. The way FOG operates is to detect the HDD in the Linux side (What’s loaded when a task is setup). Many Consumer BIOS RAID utilities don’t control the volume and present the volume as a single device, it just sets the “Software raid” items to the disks in the array. This allows the system with proper drives to mount the disks in an array form and makes it look like the disk is a single device. This isn’t really true, though. If you look at the system far enough (Linux side is easiest to show what I mean), rather than a “Single” disk being shown as the “volume” for imaging/use, if you run FDISK on one of these systems you’ll likely see all of the disks listed individually in the system.

It’s because of this the imaging seems to be having issues. It’s mounting the RAID part okay, but the “boot” partition is over-written of its boot information and then re-written with the basic boot info. This causes the boot item to lose track of the raid setup and fail to boot.

I think this is what you’re seeing. /dev/sda’s MBR is being overwritten for the download process with one that doesn’t contain the raid information. This means when the system starts to boot (while it thinks it’s okay) it can’t actually see the data on the “raid” volume.

This is just theory, but the only thing that seems to make sense to me at this point.

[Trixsta101]

Tried image again without fog prep… no luck! Same thing.

Will the SVN update help with what your saying Tom? will this mess up anything by updating?

:rage1: :rage2: :rage3: :goberserk: CHEAP RAID!

I kinda get what you mean and if using disk part on the upload machine i see 1 volume with correct partitions etc…
On the failed download pc it shows both disks, but that because after download one becomes a nonmember disk.

Any ways around this? or other cloning solutions i could use maybe. at the moment im using acronis true image booting from ipxe menu.
will be doing lot of these machines and would love to use fog.

any help appreciated

[Tom Elliott]

Unfortunately I can’t give a solid answer on that.

Theoretically it is possible, but it’s such an atypical thing. The problem with cheap raid is it’s storing the “array” layout on a disk rather than back to the BIOS/Controller. It’s this being overwritten that’s breaking the array causing it to go into a degraded state.

[Trixsta101]

@Wayne-Workman

Updated SVN (3525) and still the same issue…! Tried taking new uploaded image and after download to another machine… Broken array and wont boot.
That Update looks good thou…

Any other Things i might try?

[Tom Elliott]

@Trixsta101 While it’s not a perfect answer, I think it’s the best I can think of.

Can you create the task you’re trying as a debug type? All you do is choose your particular task, and at the confirmation screen check the box for “Schedule as debug” and then confirm.

Once booted, it will not try overwriting anything. Run the command fdisk -l, what do you see?

Maybe the kernels and the init’s load your array already, but they also see you disks. If we know what device is the array name, set that as your kernel device.

[Trixsta101]

There are some error just before it downloads the image… Guessing this is the Raid causing issues with partitions.

[Trixsta101]

@Tom-Elliott said:

If we know what device is the array name, set that as your kernel device.

Will try this now.

[Trixsta101]

@Tom-Elliott

Array name is volume1, I created the array before starting the debug task
This is what i see after running fdisk -l

[Trixsta101]

@Tom-Elliott

I used fdisk -l | more so i could seeeverything and there’s alot???

[Wayne Workman]

If this is a basic RAID 1 configuration,

Why not just disable it temporarily, and upload your image from a standard disk, then re-enable it and have RAID rebuild the clone?

Then, when you want to image, disable RAID, image, then enable RAID and have it rebuild the clone?

[Trixsta101]

@Wayne-Workman

When you restore the image the disk become a non member disk… so to rebuild it asks you to select the new disk and this is the one with the image on it… if you proceed you close everything.

If i was to restore to 1 disk (with no raid)… when i create the raid1 it formats them both.

[Wayne Workman]

Have you tried Clonezilla ?

[Trixsta101]

@Wayne-Workman

No I haven’t… Is that an addon to fog or does get require another server setup?

[Wayne Workman]

@Trixsta101

Clonezilla has no affiliation with FOG, and it does not require a server.

It’s a bootable disk used for imaging. I only suggest this because, hey, if it works, that’s great. You have 75 computers to image, right?

http://clonezilla.org/

[Trixsta101]

@Wayne-Workman

will give this a shot… would be good to have a backup if it works on software Raid.

trying to add it to the ipxe boot menu, have this but wont boot… Any idea on how to live boot it?

:clonezilla-live-2.3.2-22-amd64
kernel http://${fog-ip}/${fog-webroot}/iso/clonezilla/vmlinuz
initrd http://${fog-ip}/${fog-webroot}/iso/clonezilla/initrd.lz
imgargs vmlinuz root=/dev/nfs boot=clonezilla netboot=nfs nfsroot=${fog-ip}:/var/www/fog/service/ipxe/clonezilla/ locale=en_US.UTF-8 keyboard-configuration/layoutcode=la mirror/country=US
boot || goto failed
goto start

[Wayne Workman]

Check this post out: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/4790/how-to-add-live-cd-iso-to-fog-1-2-on-ubuntu-12-04

I’m going to be following this also, tonight.

This ISO network booting question comes up over and over and over and over and over. It’s a never-ending question lol.

If I can get it working, I’m going to make a very nice WiKi article on it.

[Trixsta101]

@Wayne-Workman
came across this https://gist.github.com/robinsmidsrod/dc0dc70adba8dcd79cdf

not sure if this would help? tried adding the forth line with no luck

#!ipxe
kernel /live/vmlinuz
initrd /live/initrd.img
imgargs vmlinuz boot=live username=user hostname=trusty config quiet union=overlayfs noswap edd=on nomodeset noeject locales= keyboard-layouts= ocs_live_run=“ocs-live-general” ocs_live_extra_param=“” ocs_live_batch=no ip= nomodeset vga=normal nosplash
boot

[Wayne Workman]

It’s probably a step in the right direction.

Keep searching though, but you’d probably have the best luck searching in the forums here for ISO tons of people have got it going on various versions of FOG.

I’ll only be addressing the next release (the one you’re using), FOG 1.3.0