Problems with using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer

[jam1987]

@george1421 Fantastic!!! I got Mint running and booting live over the network. Thank you so much for the info.

For everyone’s use I created:

/images/os/mint where I used 7z to extract the entirety of the mint.iso
/tftpboot/mint where I placed the vimlinuz and initrd.lz from the casper folder in the previously mentioned extracted iso.

My menu item in PXE is now this:

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/mint/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/mint/initrd.lz
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd.lz root=/dev/nfs boot=casper netboot=nfs nfsroot=${fog-ip}:/images/os/mint systemd.mask=tmp.mount ip=dhcp rw
boot

Boots great!! ClamAV scanning of Windows drives here I come!

[brianblaze]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I just wanted to say thank you for this in depth tutorial. It is amazing. Thank you!

[erusun]

I just wanted to add to this -
If you have an antique server that totally and completely lacks UEFI support (such as my ML350 Gen8) then you can just follow the instructions that @george1421 posted for Windows ISO’s to boot any (most) ISO’s in legacy mode. I just tested it with VMWare 6.7U2 on the HP ML350 Gen8, worked flawlessly.

[beardedfool]

@george1421

Can I just check that https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images/19 is still the latest information please.

Also, if I wanted to script the changes to the fog menu (ansible or bash) do you know where I’d start looking for the boot menu options please?

[george1421]

@beardedfool AFAIK nothing has changed for ubuntu 16.04 in years. Are you having a specific issue? I can tell you later versions of ubuntu also boot using this method. In general if I add something to the that netbooting thread I’ve personally set it up and tested.

I’m not sure I understand about scripting changes to the fog menu. The fog menu is powered by the FOG server. The fog server has built in management to add or remove entries in the iPXE menu. The language that powers the FOG iPXE menu is ipxe’s own programming language. You can see this programming language in action by opening up a web browser and pointing to this URL. http://<fog_server_ip>/fog/service/ipxe/boot/php?mac=00:00:00:00:00:00 The fog iPXE menu is specifically crafted by the fog script boot.php on the fog server.

If you could could provide a bit more details on what you want to change I might be able to give you a direction to look in.

[beardedfool]

@george1421 Thanks for the speedy reply George and apologies for not being clear

Two topics I guess…

1. Instructions - I’m just starting to look at ubuntu 20.04 and, as fog is fairly new to me, I was going to start by getting the
   Note to self: I need to see how kickstart files work with 20.04 now as different and whether this is just server vs desktop
   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/AutomatedServerInstalls
   Also whether fog can hand out different kickstart files

2. I’m working with a couple of major tools for network setups. Hoping fog will become one of them and looking promising but I’m getting more and more into ansible and proxmox as host. The reasoning behind this question was “how do I deploy a fog server automatically/ through scripts”
   I can build the VM with ansible and deploy fog but was wondering whether there was a way to make config changes through command line e.g. insert this boot menu option.

[george1421]

@beardedfool

1. I have not tested 20.04 yet. When I last looked at it, it was just released and I wanted to let the image bake a bit before attempting to setup to netboot it. I personally don’t install images this way (via netbooting) so I’ll typically setup a new entry when someone comes across a need for it. Netbooting in this method means mounting an nfs share and loading the OS from that share. With FOG you could pass different kernel parameters to the target system and then pickup those kernel parameters within the netbooted client via a custom script.

2. You may find that FOG will compliment other tools such as ansible. I have not personally worked with it but know its function. Most of the fog settings (done outside of the fog installer with its command line switches) are done via the mysql database. I have not thought about it this way, but it should be possible to create new fog ipxe menu entries by just adding a record to the fog ipxemenu (may not be the exact table name) table in mysql. So a simple bash script that creates or deletes a bunch of standard rows in that table would be enough.

[beardedfool]

1. Agreed, won’t be my main method but will be useful for other people and, to be fair, the odd quick install to test something over the network rather than breaking out usb sticks is always welcome

2. Thanks, that’s good, suspected that it would be in sql and I should be able to follow those changes.
   Even for me I can see a useful script like “redeploy.sh hostname” which creates the deploy task from outside of the fog gui, reboots the machine then performs tasks afterwards (though I also need to look at the snapins). I’ve just noticed the API so suspect there may be something there and appreciate I’ve verging off topic with that one.

Lots for me to follow up on so will leave you in peace for now but thanks for coming back to me so quickly.

[razercortex]

you need to use a WinPE image instead of Windows installer iso, I had the same issue while trying to use the installer iso. Make a WinPE image and redo the steps.

[okafor-abc]

@razercortex I’m looking to set this up with winpe but the [link](wget http://git.ipxe.org/releases/wimboot/wimboot-latest.zip) is no longer valid. Do you know if there is an updated link?

[okafor-abc]

@razercortex pls disregard. internal network issue.