Hi there
I created a fresh VM with Ubuntu 20.04 and was able to get FOG up and running. Thanks for all your help!

@thebaz The number of times someone has upgraded the OS of their FOG server and broken FOG is a lot. So many that it prompted me to write this article about five years ago. The article is still valid. My advice is to not upgrade the OS of your FOG server, unless it’s in a VM and you take a snapshot before hand. If it’s not in a VM, your safest choice is to migrate.

@geekyjm If your old fog server was on a version pre-ssl then it may have been pretty dated. There was an older update_unattend script where you would have to put the domain join password in plain-text. Now you can use the $adpass variable that pulls from the foghost’s settings. Then the domain password isn’t passed in plaintext in any script files. So you may need to update how that password is stored on your hosts under ad settings (I believe there’s a global method in the fog settings GUI) and then try again.

I just started using the update_unattend postdownload script myself and was successful without having to have the password in plain text anywhere and the machines joined the domain.

As @george1421 mentioned there may be more going on here, as there may be some new steps needed for your fog install, but we can get this working the way you’re expecting again none the less.

I have found it, you cant see the advanced tasks from the task menu, but if you go into hosts, list all host, select the PC you want, then click Basic Tasks, then advanced, the options are all there. Thanks everyone. I just needed to ask the right question. @Wayne-Workman @george1421

@george1421 Okay, I did the three commands you listed, but I think it failed on the second command. I would send you a log but I don’t know how to generate one from the terminal other than to copy and paste, and when I do that it doesn’t catch all the lines completely.

@lacugo If you switch over to the FOG 1.5.9 dev branch (a.k.a FOG 1.5.9.115) it will install cleanly on Debian 11. But sadly not ubuntu 22.04 or centos 8 where php8 is the default install. AS of now FOG only supports PHP7.x until some code refactoring is done.

@george1421
An other screen

@wayne-workman That worked. Could there be a change to the wiki in this case? I swear I spent far too long troubleshooting that.

Thank you Wayne, for your assistance. I can get to the webpage now. I’m excited to use this tool!

@wayne-workman Thanks for the response. I just decided to start from scratch since I had a earlier snapshot.

@wt_101 Well juggling three with running chainsaws doesn’t make it a bad idea, does it?

The 15 character limit is a windows NT thing. Since the majority of the folks that use fog for image deployment the developers have set it to 15 characters. If you have a use case where you need more than 15, I don’t see the harm in expanding it to more than 15 characters. That is the beauty of opensource. If it doesn’t work for you out of the box, if you have the skills you can change it.

You just need to be mindful if you have to interact with windows that the computer name might get truncated 15 characters when the computer name is set.

But also be aware that I don’t know of anyone who has tried to set computer names long that the MS defined standards either. Other things in FOG may break (thinking fog client if its hard coded at 15 characters).

@nickw Check if the real time clock is set correctly.

@sourceminer said in Capture Image partclone fail.:

Suggestion: would it be a good idea to test these dirty flags prior to running the lengthy imaging process

I know there is a check for the dirty bit before imaging starts, but that might only be on the OS partition. Looking in the code I see a resetFlags function that actually runs the “ntfsfix -d” command. I’m not sure how its applied. I know if your drive contains the windows dirty bit the imager will stop before it starts deploying anything. So its not clear why it didn’t catch the issue on the 4th partition. But I do have to say its rare that the recovery partition would have been shut down uncleanly.

But in the end I’m glad you have it worked out.

great thanks @george1421 i understand now, basically to do this right, you need to sysprep using an unattended xml file which i dont do, so best case scenario is i can just leave the drivers there and install once im on the desktop,

thanks again george

Hi

I can confirm also that Hirens boot cd it loads but i can not see the programs at all.
The apps of Hirens boot cd is not there.

@billvgn I’m trying to figure out the best way to debug this, because what is happening, shouldn’t be.

Is the issue with any model computer or only one specific model?

If we do a debug capture we might be able to catch it in the act of misbehaving.

Lets schedule another capture task, but before you hit the schedule task button, tick the debug checkbox.
Now pxe boot the target computer
after a few screens of text you will be dropped to the fos linux command prompt.
key in fog to start single stepping through the image capture.
keep pressing enter until after the first partition is captured by FOG.

At this point we should inspect the FOG server. In the /images/dev directory there should (better) be a directory with the name that appears like a mac address. Change into that directory and see if it has files. Right now don’t care how many file it has, only ensure that d1p1.img exists. It should be small since its just the efi boot partition. If its ok change up one directory, don’t stay in the capture directory or the capture will fail later at updating the database like you have.

now back on the target computer. If this is a standard windows image capture there should be 4 partitions, where the 3rd will be the largest and the 4th will be relative small since its just the recovery partition. Keep pressing enter until the 4th partclone upload is computer. Don’t press enter, but inspect the directory again make sure it has files / content but don’t go into that directory. The very next step should be the target computer will connect to the fog server using ftp and move the directory from /images/dev/<mac_address> to /images/<image_name>

Step by step single step through the capture while watching that /images/dev directory. That directory should disappear, but reappear in /images directory as the image name.

Somewhere in here its failing. Watch for an error message on the target computer.

@r-pawlowski I would be happy to help in anyway I can. Personally, I deploy a bootmanager (grub2win) and the ipxe.efi file to each machines efi partition. Then I can just change the boot managers default to boot straight to fog. It takes a bit of time to get setup, but I found it to be the most reliable as I then didn’t have to worry as much about the bios settings. Theoretically you can use bcdedit commands to change the boot order to boot to network, but that also differs on different hardware.

I digress though, the easy bit for queueing an image to deploy

Follow the setup instructions for the fog API (involves installing the module from powershell gallery and then inputting your API keys and fog server address) Then make sure the host you’re imaging is assigned the correct image, this can be changed in the API if you need that, but for this quick example, we’ll pretend it’s set correct. For an example, we’ll say the hostname of a computer in fog is ‘test-computer’, so this will find the host in fog, then queue an image to deploy on it right now $hostID = (Get-FogHost -hostname 'Test-Computer').id #create a quick json string, this can also be done in a powershell object and converted, but this is just a quick example. #tasktypeID of 1 is a deploy task, if no runtime/schedule time is specified, it defaults to instant deploy # shutdown = 0 is not scheduling with shutdown # I believe other2 = 0 means not a debug # other4 = 1 means to enable wol # isactive =1 means the task is active $jsonData = "{`"taskTypeID`": 1,`"shutdown`":`"0`",`"other2`":`"0`",`"other4`":`"1`",`"isActive`":`"1`" }"; # make the API call to create the new task for your host New-FogObject -type objecttasktype -coreTaskObject host -jsonData $jsonData -IDofObject $hostId;

Once you have this all setup in a powershell module or script internally, you can get things automated pretty smoothly. It’s meant to be modular so it can be applied to any infrastructure or workflow and built upon.

If you need more help let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

@george1421 thank you! I was able to manually update the kernel and resolved my issue.

@ookami said in Expand Registration Info:

register a machine without a disk installed

Pretty sure you can create hosts from the web UI, all you need is the MAC address.

As to your other questions, I suppose you’re talking about the IPXE registration, and not the web UI. I don’t think RAM is a supported field, or DIMM slot allocation either, nor specific details about RAM.

What your looking for is extra fields in the database. Those are easy enough to add manually, but having them show up in the UI is a lot more work, and involves PHP as well as JS, and I’d be very little help in that area. My PHP skills are basic at best, and FOG’s PHP is fairly advanced. As to the JS, I’ve got zero experience with it.

@riry Yes and no. Lets follow this tutorial https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7727/building-usb-booting-fos-image

Also look at the FOG Forum chat bubble for a few more hints.