Unable to capture win7 image

[Tony Lillie]

I’m running FOG 7625 trunk on Debian 8. The system seems to be working fine with all my other hosts in this environment, in that I can register them and capture images (not doing much deploying… mostly using FOG for backups).
BUT… I have a very new Dell Precision 3420 (current gen i5 and DDR4 ram) that registers with FOG just fine, but when I try to capture an image from it I get an “invalid seek error”.

It then tells me to check the /var/log/partclone.log file, but that file does not exist when I look for it. I read somewhere to enable debug, which I did, but then the actual capture task doesn’t run at all, and thus obviously no errors are thrown. All it does in debug mode is give me a command prompt at the host, which is really of no use at all. Can someone explain the purpose of the debug checkbox??

I’ve searched around for a few hours now and can’t seem to find a solution. Anyone have any thoughts?
I’m happy to post any useful logs etc… if someone thinks it will help get to the bottom of this.

[Tom Elliott]

The file /var/log/partclone.log file you see on the client is not referring to the server. That file is stored on the client. Can you capture a particular image to show us exactly what you’re seeing? Do you have multiple of the same system that you might be able to try? Does this happen to all of them?

[george1421]

said in Unable to capture win7 image:

Dell Precision 3420

I think we are going to need to get a bit more information on this system. I see that this model can have a number of different drives M.2 SSD, SATA SSD, SATA HDD, and Self encrypting drives (??).

From the FOG iPXE menu, can you select (sorry I’m missing the name) hardware comparability. We need to test to see if FOG can reach the hard drive OK.

If you setup a debug capture, and once you are at the command prompt enter fog and step through the deployment. You should be able to inspect this log file mentioned in the error message. As Tom said this log file exists in the FOS client (the OS that captures and deploys images).

Before you launch the fog command above, execute the following command and post the output here. lsblk The output will give us an idea what the FOS client is seeing disk wise.

Lastly that precision has a built in RAID controllers. Are your disks in a RAID configuration? If so you are out of luck capturing the image with any linux based capture/deploy software.

[Tony Lillie]

@george1421 It has a single SSD with standard Win7 partitions (three of them), no bitlocker enabled or other encryption, and no RAID. I’m not sure what you are referring to with the “hardware comparability”, but I can register that host with the FOG server, and schedule a capture task. The partclone process to “capture” an image begins, but very quickly fails as previously described.
What is the FOS client?? Are you and Tom saying the partclone.log file is on the Dell host in the RAM? How can I interrupt the error shutdown process and access a command prompt to find that file? It auto shuts down the system in one minute upon throwing the error.
Tom, capture an image? I don’t know how I would get it from the client to my other machine to send it to you.
I don’t have multiples of this system yet, but I will eventually, which is why I am testing it now.

[Wayne Workman]

@Tony-Lillie said in Unable to capture win7 image:

What is the FOS client??

@george1421 likes to come up with snazzy-sounding acronyms. “FOS” is “FOG Operating System” (which could be further expanded to… Free Open Ghost Operating System). It’s the environment that the uploads and downloads and other network-boot based tasks happen in. That’s all.

If you would run a debug task as George asked, and follow his instructions and provide the requested outputs, it would help us greatly in our effort to help you.

[Tom Elliott]

@Tony-Lillie just going to guess as to the problem you’re seeing.

Can you recreate the upload task but make it a debug task? Do this by setting up the task as normal, but before confirming click the checkbox for Schedule as a debug task. This will drop you to a prompt. At the prompt on the client system, run fixparts /dev/sda and confirm and write changes, if it asks. Then type fog and step through the tasking. With any luck your system will start uploading as expected.

[Sebastian Roth]

With any luck your system will start uploading as expected.

And if you see any error along the way please take a picture with your smartphone and upload here. As Wayne would put it: A picture is worth a thousand words!!

As well please run lsblk and show us the output before starting the capture with fog command. From what I read between the lines this might be a special case of yet unknown major ids - which we can add without much effort as soon as we know.