Making Fog Portable

[sudburr]

Is there a way?

We have our standard FOG servers, and we have FOG virtualized on laptops. These laptops use the identical Virtual Machine. The IP for this VM’s MAC is reserved in each of 60+ subnets, which the laptops can visit.

We want the VM powered up at the site where it takes on the properties (IP) of that site. eg: FOG_TFTP_HOST, FOG_WEB_HOST, FOG_WOL_HOST, /tftpboot/default.ipxe and wherever else it needs to be configured for full functionality.

We do not want the techs to be logging into host OS, or need to perform the changes manually through the web interface.

We want a turn-key solution for the techs. Plug-in, Power-Up, Automatically Reconfigures without intervention.

Is this possible now without reconfiguring the server?

Can it be made possible without manual intervention?

If no to either, can it be made possible?

I’ve harvested some ideas from the forums, and added some of our own to include this in /etc/rc.local:
[CODE]IP=ip addr list eth0 | grep "inet " |cut -d" " -f6|cut -d/ -f1
mysql --user=root -pOurPassword -e “UPDATE `globalSettings` SET `settingValue` = ‘$IP’ WHERE `settingKey` =‘FOG_TFTP_HOST’;” fog
mysql --user=root -pOurPassword -e “UPDATE `globalSettings` SET `settingValue` = ‘$IP’ WHERE `settingKey` =‘FOG_WEB_HOST’;” fog
mysql --user=root -pOurPassword -e “UPDATE `globalSettings` SET `settingValue` = ‘$IP’ WHERE `settingKey` =‘FOG_WOL_HOST’;” fog
mysql --user=root -pOurPassword -e “UPDATE `nfsGroupMembers` SET `ngmHostname` = ‘$IP’ WHERE `ngmMemberName` =‘DefaultMember’;” fog[/CODE]

I’ll let you know how it goes.

[sudburr]

Success!

We now have a truly portable FOG Server. We changed several instances of hard coded IP to variables, and through rc.local rewrote others by detecting the new IP at startup.

So far everything appears to work as intended. Host Registration, tasks, quick image.

We’ve also merged several of our installation recipe steps through some new aggressive scripting to cut down on copy/pasting steps.

I will update my recipes in the Tutorials with this new code.

[sudburr]

Our Step by Step Install of Ubuntu “14.04.1-server-amd64” for FOG ( [url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/our-step-by-step-install-of-ubuntu-14-04-1-server-amd64-for-fog.11937/[/url] )

Our Step by Step Install of FOG ( [url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/our-step-by-step-install-of-fog.12068/[/url] )

[juice381]

Can you point me in the right direction for your “RECIPE” to accomplishing this. I searched but seems like I can’t find it.
Thank youi

[Wayne Workman]

@juice381 I’ve already accomplished this for Fedora and centos, fully automated. I’ll post the link in a bit.

[juice381]

@Wayne-Workman Much appreciated! I’m a manager of an MSP and have an every day use case for this. With many clients to support its often that we have to reimage their pcs to our standard build. Being able to use a portable dynamic pxe booting image solution would be a significant time saver.

Thanks again

[sudburr]

Since I made that post I moved onto Debian, then CentOS7. My CentOS 7.1 recipe (for solely running a FOG Server) is still up. I will soon be posting expanded documentation to account for some changes I’ve made since 2015/10.

Meanwhile, others have expanded on what I’ve done in imaginative ways. Check out the Tutorial section of the Forums for Wiki links.

[Wayne Workman]

@juice381 It’s been a hot minute since I’ve used this, but if any changes need made to work with the current, it will be easy and probably only take a few minutes. If you need help setting it up, just ask.
https://github.com/wayneworkman/FOGUpdateIP

[juice381]

Thanks guys much appreciated. Currently using Kubuntu as my base OS should I switch to CentOS? Not really familiar with that Linux flavor, but I learn quick.

[juice381]

@Wayne-Workman I got this working partially. Using your scripts. The only issue i’m having is with the cron job its not running. I’ll leave it for another day.

[Wayne Workman]

@juice381 said in Making Fog Portable:

I’ll leave it for another day.

If you can post the contents of crontab -e we can probably figure out what’s going on. It’s been a good moment since I’ve used these scripts, but I promise they were working on Fedora and CentOS lol. They probably will work on RHEL just fine too.

[juice381]

@Wayne-Workman So I’m back at this. Was caught up in an implementation for the last 4 months.

If you have some time to assist please let me know.

Where I am now. Started from scratch. Installed latest FOG version Running Version 1.3.0-RC-8
SVN Revision: 5949

Running on an ODROID C2 using ARMBIAN OS (Debian based) Fog is running no problems there. However this version doesn’t create a /opt/fog/.fogsettings file. So your script immediately exited. So i created a blank version and now the script ran. Where can I see if anything was changed ? Since the file is empty doesn’t look like its doing anything.

Once again I appreciate the assist here.

[Wayne Workman]

@juice381 said in Making Fog Portable:

Running on an ODROID C2 using ARMBIAN OS (Debian based) Fog is running no problems there.

That’s why. Right now, those scripts I wrote only will work on Fedora or CentOS.

So, two options. 1. Help me make a Debian version. 2. Switch to Fedora or CentOS.

[george1421]

@juice381 said in Making Fog Portable:

ODROID C2

Warning this post is off-point: I have not used an odroid device before, but I have used a raspberry pi. IF you are going to use the onboard micro sd for storage, used a good quality class 10 or uhs-1 device if you want any speed out of your device. I initially made the mistake of just going to the local big box store and picked up a cheap micros SD card. My first impression of the pi as it was junk, and unusably slow. After doing some research I decided to replace the sd card with something faster. Once I replaced the boot media with a samsug evo micro sd card the pi came to life. Depending on the number of images you need, the micro sd card may be all you need.

[juice381]

@george1421 Thanks, I too used an rpi, version 3 and updated to the SD card the same. My problem here was with the 100 meg Ethernet nic. The odroid c2 has significantly more memory, processing power, comes with a gigabit nic. in addition I have the option to purchase a superfast emmc card to host my os on.

[juice381]

@Wayne-Workman What do you need from me sir? How can I be of assistance in getting this to work? I would have no issues switching to one of the os’s you mentioned but I don’t think they have an arm based one developed.

[Wayne Workman]

@juice381 said in Making Fog Portable:

I would have no issues switching to one of the os’s you mentioned but I don’t think they have an arm based one developed.

Sure they do.
https://arm.fedoraproject.org/

Of course, I’m still down with developing for Debian, I think Debian is just super-cool. It’s the most “free” of all Linux distributions.

[juice381]

@Wayne-Workman Crap! how did I miss that? None the less I’ll try this again tonight.

I would like to get this working in debian as well though, as I am much more comfortable navigating that environment.

[george1421]

@juice381 said in Making Fog Portable:

I would like to get this working in debian as well though, as I am much more comfortable navigating that environment.

This probably would not be a bad decision in the long run either. Since debian on the ARM processors is very popular. The hardest part is getting fog installed on an arm processor and working well. The rest is just config files that need to be updated for portability.

[Tom Elliott]

@george1421 et all. I’m still around. I can probably help