Stop clients do networkboot / Stop FOG networkboot services
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Hello to all,
I didn’t find a answer to my issue in the forums so i opened a new topic.
I want that the FOG web interface is still available but the clients stop to do networkboot by stoping the services.
But if I stop the isc-dhcp-server, tftp-hpa and the vsftpd service, the clients still get an IP-address from the fog server and trying to to load the files.
So which services I have also to stop that the clients skip the FOG server? -
What?
If fog is your dhcp server and you stop the dhcp server, there is no magic. Systems would not automatically get ips unless you have another dhcp server, which multiple dhcp servers on a single network is a bad idea.
Stopping services is fine. I don’t understand why though. Fog is designed to work from pxe boot. What is the point of the gui? It serves no purpose if all the services that make fog fog are disabled.
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I want to start the fog server only if I want that. Accessing the webinterface is not that important but if it’s possible to stop the clients booting from the fog/ipxe and leave the UI still accessible would be nice. If the fog server is stopped, the UI is only for accessing the data from the registered hosts.
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@Oleg you could also change the boot method on the clients themselves, so they boot from their hard disk instead of a network boot? I have no idea how many clients you have, but if there are like 1 - 5 clients, I’d do it like that.
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With FOG your clients should usually boot from harddisk (after the PXE menu). So I don’t see the point of stopping FOG (which would cause the clients to timeout on PXE and then boot from harddisk - taking way longer). You can even hide the PXE menu and have your client boot straight to the harddisk after PXE. Check out the FOG settings in the web interface for hiding the menu.
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@Oleg, I agree with everybody else’s postings.
There are many options that would do what you’re wanting without having to turn off the component that, quite literally, make fog work to begin with.
We have different EXIT types that allows the system to boot to their first HDD, or if you need to you can edit it to boot to whatever you need.
We also have different menu types.
We have the “Full Menu” which just displays the menu to every system.
We have the “Hide Menu” which checks with the FOG Server if there is a task. If there is no task, the system will wait for a key sequence to be pressed that will prompt you to login and present the menu items, without the key sequence you just see it saying: “Press these keys to see the menu” and it will timeout and exit back to the HDD.
We have the “No Menu” which I think is what you’re really looking for. This option will not present any menu in any form. It will check with the server if there is a tasking to be performed. If there is a tasking, it will run the tasking, if there is no tasking, it will immediately boot to the first hdd.
Hopefully this helps.
Of course you can disable the items you don’t want as you see fit, but there’s a lot of services. So say you decide that today we need to run a tasking, you would have to ensure all the services necessary (tftpd-hpa/xinetd, dhcp as needed, apache/httpd, and vsftpd, as well as the FOG services on the linux box) are started and operating properly.
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Fog is not designed to be a “run when needed” solution, that’d be a terrible waste. Might as well use something instead that is actually designed to be a “run when needed” solution like Clonezilla instead.
There are even severe negative consequences to running it only when “needed”, especially if you use the Fog Client. Because then, any manual hostname changes that you do manually, all those get undone immediately when Fog is turned back on, because when you use FOG to manage hostnames, imaging, printers, snapins, and power settings, you REALLY ARE using FOG to MANAGE hostnames, imaging, printers, snapins, and power settings…
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@Tom-Elliott Thanks, i will try the settings with the Menu.
Now I already cloned about 400 Ubuntu computers and everything went fine.
In 2 of our network Installations, which are connected via vpn and are a couple miles away from my office, we have some computers connected with access points (2 different models) one model doesn’t make any problems and talking with the FOG server at every boot, take the jobs if there any. The other access point model get a ip address but stops somewhere in the boot sequnce.
If the FOG server is off, everything is fine. Stopping the dhcp-server, vsftpd, tftpd-hpa but they still stop to boot somewhere. I am not able to get there now to see what happens but the fact is, that if the FOG server is down, the computer are booting.That’s the reason why I’m asking which services I can stop on the FOG server to let the computers start properly and investigate to problem later. Shutting down the FOG server is possible because the is running another software.
Thanks to all
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@Wayne-Workman i know that FOG is not a “run when needed” solution but in my case with the access point I need this for a short time. If I know why they hang in boot and can solve that, FOG will run normally.
So can someone tell me how to stop FOG without removing it? -
As we are not able to see what else is in your network it is very hard to guess what’s going on. But I can offer to look at a packet dump and hopefully we can find out what’s causing the issue.
Please turn off all your clients for that. Install tcpdump on your FOG server and start it up as root
tcpdump -i eth0 -w bootup.pcap(change eth0 if you use a different network interface on this server). Leave tcpdump sitting there and start up one of your clients. After it “failed” you can stop tcpdmp with Ctrl+c and upload the PCAP file to the forum.Please also take a picture or even better video of the booting client so we can see what you see as well.
This way we might be able to help. Everything else is just blind guessing.
