When rebuilding a fog server...

[Wayne Workman]

Things you should think about. These things are often overlooked just because people don’t know. Well, I’m here to tell you so you know.

1. Backing up your database - or at least your hosts - might be very important to you.
2. Copying your old images - might be very important to you.
3. Maintaining control of existing deployed FOG Clients - might be very important to you.
4. Do not use dynamic disks in your hypervisor.

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If the web interface is working - you can export just hosts by going to Host Management -> Export. You can also export the entire database by going to FOG Configuration -> Configuration Save -> Export. You’d import these things in the same area.

If the web interface is not working, you can export the database via CLI. If there is no password for the FOG database, you would export as:
mysqldump fog > fogdb.sql

If the database is password protected:
mysqldump fog -p > fogdb.sql
Then provide the password when prompted.

And then move this file off of the server to somewhere else via a number of ways, the most easy being SCP to another linux box - the “Other” linux box can be any of your storage nodes or other fog servers or linux boxes. This is just a db backup, it’s just a file. SCP syntax is:

scp user@source user@destination

If the source or destination is the local server you’re working on, leave off the user part.

For example to send:
scp fogdb.sql root@10.2.1.11:/root

To retrieve:
scp root@10.2.1.11:/root/fogdb.sql fogdb.sql

To import the db via CLI:
mysql < fogdb.sql

If password protected:
mysql -p < fogdb.sql

You can find additional details and help here:
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Troubleshoot_MySQL

There’s a number of ways to copy images. Many ways are listed here:
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Migrate_images_manually
Don’t forget to consider image definitions, this is included in the above article.

Fog is secure. Existing FOG Clients absolutely will not accept a new fog server if it doesn’t authenticate as the genuine server the FOG Client knew when it was originally installed on said machine/image. Without getting too technical, know that this authentication cannot be faked. If this happens, there is no dramatic impact other than the existing FOG Client installations being of no use.

However - you can move the old fog server’s certificates to the new server. This is easy to do if you have access to the old fog server. This allows you to maintain control of all the existing fog clients - because the FOG Server will authenticate as genuine because it’s using the correct certificates. Steps are here:
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=FOG_Client#Maintain_Control_Of_Hosts_When_Building_New_Server

[ch3i]

Maybe you can add it to the wiki instead forums ?

[Wayne Workman]

@ch3i Yes, I will. I’m waiting for user feedback and other suggestions. The forums is how to “vet” information lol.

[Wayne Workman]

@Joe-Schmitt How would you word it while keeping it simple?

[Joe Schmitt]

fog server’s ssl certificates -> fog server’s certificates

[Wayne Workman]

Replying to this older thread with a newer article: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Migrate_FOG