Fog client confusion

[Tom Elliott]

How is quick image not self explanatory? It is telling you exactly what it’s going to do. It’s going to image that system.

What do you call “uploading” then? I don’t understand how it is confusing.

That said, there’s already a way you can change the label however you want. This is under FOG Configuration Page->iPXE Menu Configuration->fog.quickimage.

Feel free to change the text however you see fit.

[Tom Elliott]

I feel I need to clarify things.

I understand why this question is brought up, but disagree with changing the text. Why you might ask? Because ultimately it doesn’t matter what is there. Somebody, somewhere, somehow will dislike and suggest it to be changed to something else regardless of what is there. For example, changing the “Would you like to image this system now?” question from the inits. How would we phrase it so it is definitive to EVERYBODY who reads it? Just think of your answer, then think about what somebody else might think is the “proper” answer. The reason these questions are asked the way they are, in some sense, is to help alleviate what would otherwise be a word brawl.

Capture is relative.

Deploy is relative.

Image is relative.

In verbal context, to image is to clone “this” system like another. Here’ the definition if you don’t believe me:

Search: What is imaging
COMPUTING
make an exact copy of (a computer’s hard disk).
“the hard disk drive should be imaged using a specialized bitstream backup product”

Why does this matter, the Context is the fact that it’s to make that system’s HDD an exact copy of what’s already available. If the definition exists, but the image hasn’t been loaded, it won’t create the task because it has nothing to copy from.

Getting “too wordy” can also be a point of problems. Somebody will essentially get a “TL;DR;” in their mind and still possibly mess it up then come in saying it wasn’t described enough.

At what point do I stop making revisions and schema changes over text? Even with that, you still have to think of things in context of where you’re at. I’m not going to change this text in either case because somebody else somewhere down the line may make a totally separate distinction and then I’ll be “expected” to change it then.

[Tom Elliott]

To add on further:

What is Capture?

What is Deploy?

Here’s why I ask those. While most will agree on the definition as we use it today, what if somebody says:

“Isn’t the server being deployed to when the host is sending an image?”

“Isn’t the host capturing the image from the server?”

The phrasing really doesn’t matter, but somehow people expect context to work one way, but not the other.

[Quazz]

@Tom-Elliott I think people are confused because in certain software/circles, to image a system is to capture the image, not deploy it.

I think most people will operate from the perspective of the client device since they’ll be present at it to use Quick Image. This is also how the terminology is used in the WebGUI for scheduling tasks.

At the end of the day it’s all semantics, and if I’m not mistaken well documented on the wiki.

edit: Perhaps something like “Deploy image to this client device” is a decent way to phrase it?

[Tom Elliott]

@Quazz The phrasing is what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter how you word it, somebody may make some correlation in the opposite direction.

[Junkhacker]

@Quazz i have never heard anyone say to image a drive and mean to create an image. I’ve heard “capture an image,” “create an image,” “pull an image,” “make a backup image” but never “image the drive” the only way to completely eliminate confusion would be to make the description ridiculously verbose.

[Quazz]

@Junkhacker I think the exact wording doesn’t matter much as long as the direction is expressed clearly (using to and from), imo

[Tom Elliott]

@Quazz I see where you’re headed, but that’s just it. You’re saying the exact wording doesn’t matter, but that’s exactly what this post is about. It’s about the exact phrasing being expressed clearly, where anybody can misinterpret any text however they see fit.

[Wayne Workman]

You cannot misinterpret “Quick image deployment”.

[Tom Elliott]

@Wayne-Workman Quick Image deployment up or down?

[Tom Elliott]

Deploy:

verb (used with object)

1. Military. to spread out (troops) so as to form an extended front or line.
2. to arrange in a position of readiness, or to move strategically or appropriately:

To deploy literally means to set up a tasking. That’s it.

[Wayne Workman]

@Tom-Elliott Then “Quick deploy existing image”

[Quazz]

@Tom-Elliott I agree that at the end of the day there’s almost so much you can do and that a well documented wiki is far more important than any of this, but I see little harm in trying to minimize ambiguity.

@Junkhacker said in Fog client confusion:

@Quazz i have never heard anyone say to image a drive and mean to create an image. I’ve heard “capture an image,” “create an image,” “pull an image,” “make a backup image” but never “image the drive” the only way to completely eliminate confusion would be to make the description ridiculously verbose.

^ working off that logic, having just “Quick image” makes no sense at all.

At the end of the day I care very little about this, just playing devil’s advocate I guess.

[Tom Elliott]

Quick deploy existing image? Where is it existing from? Server, or the machine that’s trying to setup the tasking?

[Junkhacker]

@Quazz my point is that to image a drive by default means to put an existing image on the drive. any other use of the term requires qualifiers like “create an image”

[Quazz]

@Junkhacker That’s fair, but perhaps it would be useful for the long run to have consistent terminology accross all of FOG, that is to say if “Quick image” represents “Deploy image to this host” from the WebGUI ( sort of ), then that should be named something similar.

I understand where newbies’ confusion is coming from, is all.

[Tom Elliott]

To clarify in the english language would require more along the lines of:

Place existing file from FOG Server after another master system had its data copied to the server by means of placing the bits copied from the originating file onto the this system.

Like I said, I understand the confusion, but I’m not changing it. This value is already changeable. As for the init’s, making an entire build of a file simply for changing around a few words (not even spelled incorrectly) is moot to me. It can be done yes, but now that we all know what it means, we can inform others as they ask. There shouldn’t be the rant about something that literally has no impact on how a system works at all.

If you take “Image this host now” as to upload and image and ruin your “master” system, when this is already clearly documented not only in our own wiki, but other tutorials on how to properly create a master image, I’m sorry. I didn’t know we had to make the entire system self documenting, which means the point of a manual is what?

[coco65]

@Tom-Elliott Don’t get mad, I was making this remark to help future newcomers, not to troll you. I know how it works now, just trying to help in making it better, not only for the hardcore/oldschool users but for newcomers also.

Note that English is not my native language, I am not trying to be a grammar professor here. In the wiki the word image is mostly used as a thing (an image), not a process (to image).

See https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Managing_FOG#Hosts

Images
Image objects in FOG are the representation of the physical files that contain the disk or partition images that are saved on the FOG server.

See https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Managing_FOG#General_Tasks

General Tasks
The general/common Tasks in FOG include unicast image upload, and unicast image send, as well as a multicast image send. In FOG, sending an image to the server is considered an image upload, and deploying an image to the client is called a send. Both of these tasks can be started directly from the search, list all hosts, and list all groups pages.

In the wiki the terms upload and send are used and explained, but in the web console (GUI) it’s called capture and deploy in the menu and tooltip. So the wiki and GUI and boot menu are not in sync.

From a usability perspective I would suggest that you choose 2 words (like capture and deploy) and then use the same terms in the wiki, the UI and the client boot menu. One line of text describing if it goes from client to server or from server to client, would not hurt. When you are standing before a client, that just PXE booted, the wiki is not at hand.

[Wayne Workman]

@coco65 Well said.

[coco65]

@MRCUR

I have to disagree with this. When you use “image” as a verb, it implies that you are downloading the image to the computer.

In the past I have tried and/or worked with (but i prefer Fog over them):

• Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
• Acronis Snap Deploy
• Clonezilla
• Trinity Rescue Kit
• CloneDeploy
• WDS: Windows Deployment Services

In those systems “making an image” or imaging means copying all the data from a (client) hard disk to a file (on a server or somewhere). Bringing the data back to a client system is called deploy, send, push, download or restore. I do not care how it is called in Fog, just keep it the same in the console, the boot menu and the wiki. Capture/Deploy works fine for me.