FOG Multicast doesn't work

[arnaudrigole]

Hello Fog Community,

Today i try to run a multicast task on two DELL computers. They’re both inventoried and in the same group, which is assigned to their good image.

When i boot these on PXE, the process starts, load the kernel, see the waiting task, and they stop both on partclone when “starting to restore image” to device /dev/sda1 (see the picture below)

Any ideas ? it will very helpful to image 3 or more computers simultaneously

Regards
Arnaud

[URfog]

I’ve got the same error when Server and Clients are connected to different VLANs

Could it be your error? Try in the same VLAN, router, etc.

[arnaudrigole]

Hi,

I just pluged physically fog server + 2 machines on the same netgear (non-manageable) switch. It still don’t work (same problem)
We have only 2 VLANs in my company, one for telephony, one for DATA. (default)

[fry_p]

@arnaudrigole said in FOG Multicast doesn't work:

Any ideas ? it will very helpful to image 3 or more computers simultaneously

Just as a quick workaround while the others look at this, with the cost of slower deployment, the default number of simultaneous Unicast sessions is 10 for FOG. This means you can normally image up to 10 (or more if you change the default setting) PC’s at the same time. The rest will automatically queue up and jump on as others finish. My rule of thumb is it isn’t worth multicasting if there are less than say 30 PC’s that need imaged at once. The downside is that of course performance is impacted in the speed of deployment. Just thinking out loud.

[arnaudrigole]

@fry_p said in FOG Multicast doesn't work:

Just as a quick workaround while the others look at this, with the cost of slower deployment, the default number of simultaneous Unicast sessions is 10 for FOG. This means you can normally image up to 10 (or more if you change the default setting) PC’s at the same time. The rest will automatically queue up and jump on as others finish. My rule of thumb is it isn’t worth multicasting if there are less than say 30 PC’s that need imaged at once. The downside is that of course performance is impacted in the speed of deployment. Just thinking out loud.

Hello @fry_p
I dont understand what you want to say me i’m currently just testing FOG multicast, and i think if it doesn’t work with 2 hosts, it will don’t work with more

[gerald.stachl]

@arnaudrigole
which fog version do you use? i had similar problems (see: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7414/multicast-not-starting/11). Do you have all the log files in /opt/fog/log?

[Quazz]

@arnaudrigole He’s saying that if you have less than 30 computers to image simultaneously you could use the normal way of deployment with Quick image for example in the mean time.

Could you tell us what OS FOG is running on? And which revision you’re at? (number in the cloud on the WebGUI)

[Sebastian Roth]

• Multicast service running on the FOG server? ps ax | grep FOGMulti
• udp-sender running on the FOG server (while you have the clients waiting on the blue screens)? ps ax | grep udp
• Anything useful in the multicast.log (web gui -> FOG Configuration -> Log viewer)?

[Wayne Workman]

Just throwing these links out there if it might help.
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Troubleshoot_Downloading_-_Multicast
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Multicast

[fry_p]

@arnaudrigole I was under the impression that this was a production environment. I merely was suggesting and giving advice. I’m sure these other fellows can help with multicast.

[Sunks]

I had the same problem,and found the solution in that post https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7414/multicast-not-starting/38. Tom gave the advice to remove the directory /opt/fog and start the installer again (./installfog)

[arnaudrigole]

@Quazz
Is it possible to upload 5+ PCs simultanesouly with unicast deployment?

@gerald-stachl
I use version 1.3 of FOG

@Sebastian-Roth
I’ll watch the logs, see below the processes:

@Wayne-Workman
Lets try to read and understand that procedures ^^

[Quazz]

@arnaudrigole It’s possible, there’s a sweet spot somewhere after which you’ll experience slower deploy speeds (although arguably they might still be faster than multicast). What that sweet spot is depends on your hardware and network setup.

5 clients simultaneously with unicast should not cause any issues though.

Also, if you’ve registered your client devices, then you can limit the number of devices that can download the image from the server at any one time in the Storage Node settings and let them wait in queue instead! This method used by a lot of people here.

If you’re not registering them then you can still deploy of course, but the queue won’t happen automagically.

As for your current problem, it looks like udpsender is not starting.(or perhaps you didn’t try to start multicast when you looked at the process?)

[Sebastian Roth]

@arnaudrigole As you can see there are no udp-sender processes running. So multicast just cannot happen. Those should be started by the FOGMulticastManager service (which seems fine on your server). So please check the logs as I suggested earlier.