Fog Changes OS password

[safari2010]

Hello,

I am using Linux Mint 18.3, ive noticed right after installing fog, the admin password for my OS changes. I actually don’t know what it changes too. But I suspect fog is generating this key.

Any idea why this is happening? and how to stop it?

Thank You.

[george1421]

Are you using fog’s linux service account called fog perchance? That linux user is managed and owned by the FOG application. If you change/reset this account you will have imaging issues.

[safari2010]

@george1421 Im not sure, I can check… but first I have to log-in my OS! trying to reset the password. I saw this happening in Kubuntu as well, for some weird reason the original admin password for the OS just gets knocked off. I am wondering what I am doing wrong in the fog install process. At least it would be helpful to know what the password changes too.

[george1421]

@safari2010 OK lets get some clarity here. Is the password changing happening on the FOG server when you install fog (on the fog server), or on a target system? If it is the target system, what is the user account name, where the password is being changed?

[safari2010]

@george1421 Host/Target system- “admin” account. I’m always afraid to reset the machine as it works for a little bit, but I think an update gets triggered and then the target system password changes. At one point I resorted to using VM because I can just reload the past configuration.

At the moment, I just recently changed it back to my standard password. Now I need to check if Imaging will still work, this happened before. When I change my target systems password back, I notice imaging starts to fail. Makes me wonder if there is a mismatch somewhere. Thanks for the help.

[george1421]

@safari2010 Well I can tell you that fog doesn’t change anything in the target system by default. To do this in FOG you would have to do something outside of the norm, because the FOS engine (the linux OS that moves images from the fog server to the target computer) doesn’t have access to the target image security/logon environment (under normal circumstances).

Since this is abnormal behavior from FOG, lets collect a bit more information. During FOG deployment, have you setup any FOG post install scripts?

Are you using the FOG client on / in the target OS?

Are you deploying any snapins that might alter the user accounts on the target OS?

[Wayne Workman]

Another question in addition to George’s:

• Look in the fogsettings file: cat /opt/fog/.fogsettings and look for the field called username. What is it set to?

This username is the only account that FOG will set the password for. The default is fog.

Generally, users of FOG are quite notorious for setting up the OS with an account called ‘fog’ even though every relevant wiki article and every thread on the topic advises against it. Don’t know why really, I guess the universe wants it that way.

References:

• https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Password_Central
• https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=.fogsettings