Wrong Image Size indicated in the image manager.

[processor]

Hi,

My config :

• Host Type VM
• OS Ubuntu 16.04
• Mysql 5.7.25
• Apache 2.4.38
• PHP 7.1.27
• Storage iSCSI

Clients Config :

• Windows 10
• Dell Optiplex 9020
• SSD 500GB or 1TB

Image Params :

• Image Type : Single Disk Resizeable
• Partition : Everything.
• Compression : 6.
• Image Manager : Partclone Zstd

I have a strange behavior with FOG, the image size ON client indicate the disk size :

And When I try to deploy on smaller drives I can’t, whereas the data size should not be an issue.

Any suggestion on what can be my problem?

Reg.,

Proc.

[george1421]

I guess two things here…

1. If you were to take one of these image captures and compare it to the actual computer, how does it compare? Is the 465GB the size of the hard drive (approximately) or the true size of the data on the disk? The numbers are suspiciously high and consistent for me based on my experience.
2. If you were to recapture the image again, look at the partclone screen during image capture. What does the type say, maybe raw?

What I’m suspecting is that FOG is seeing the disk encrypted with bitlocker and since its encrypted it switches to raw mode because that is the only way it can copy an encrypted disk. We have seen in the past even if bitlocker is off, it really on and has encrypted partitions or free space.

[processor]

The data does not fill the entire disk.
Captured machines have between 90GB and 390GB data inside.

I’ll recapture an image in few minutes. I’ll check about the raw mode but as far as I understand raw mode introduce very long time to dump, whereas I’m around 12GB/minute and 17GB/minute which is quite honest. (which means about 35 minutes for 390GB)

But may be something in W10 may cause this issue. Is there something to do before the capture on the host machine?

[george1421]

@processor said in Wrong Image Size indicated in the image manager.:

raw mode introduce very long time to dump, whereas I’m around 12GB/minute and 17GB/minute which is quite honest.

Just for clarity the 12-17GB/m in the speed at which data is being written/captured to the local media. It really doesn’t indicate how much its data it moving.

If you are cloning just data, 90GB data at 17GB/m should take about 5 minutes to complete regardless of the actual size of the disk that data resides on (assuming single disk resizable was selected for image capture). Single disk resizable doesn’t copy empty blocks, only disk blocks that contain data. In RAW mode, partclone has to copy all blocks because they are encrypted and don’t look empty even in single disk resizable.

[processor]

@george1421 said in Wrong Image Size indicated in the image manager.:

Just for clarity the 12-17GB/m in the speed at which data is being written/captured to the local media. It really doesn’t indicate how much its data it moving.

I’m aware of this, no worries.
The times indicated are correct as I deploy a 30GB machine in around 2 minutes.

So in my test I have deployed a dump of a disk indicated at 465GB on a 1TB disk.
The image is deployed normally but instead of use the whole disk, a partition of 465GB has
been created. (which is disk size of the source machine)

There is only 384GB of data.

So now I just tried the dump again from the 1TB disk.
I did not see during the dump start that it would be done in RAW mode but I saw that the only present partition
won’t be shunken, but I don’t know why.

Any idea?

Ps: Forget to write that used disks are SSD.

PPs: I’m wondering if the first partition is not seen as reserved partition

[george1421]

@processor It sure sounds like the disk is encrypted for some reason. If you want to debug this more we can. Take one of these computers where you are doing the capture from and schedule another capture but before you hit the submit task button tick the check box it says debug. Then pxe boot the target computer. After a few enter key presses you will be dropped to a linux command prompt.

From there we will need to run a few commands to see what we can see.

[processor]

@george1421 ok Thanks. It’ll be tomorrow as from their it’s already 8pm.
If you already have few commands to run let me know.
Did you see my PS in my previous post (about reserved partition)?
I read this: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/9318/partitions-is-not-shrinking-in-windows-10/14 and if I well understand a reserved partition will be set to a fixed size.

[processor]

@george1421 As I thought the only present partition is seen as reserved. Could it be possible that a main partition would also be a reserved partition or could it be seen as reserved by fog without being it?
I’ll send a screenshot later.

[george1421]

@processor Ah, it looks like I never followed through with the commands I wanted you to try.

1. Boot into the FOS debug console.
2. key in lsblk and post the output here.
3. key in fdisk -l /dev/sda and post the output here.
4. key in (assuming the second partition is the windows drive):

mkdir /ntfs
ntfs-3g -o force,rw /dev/sda2 /ntfs
ls -la /ntfs

5. Confirm the output of the ls -la appears to be the drive

umount /ntfs

6. Done.

I’m going to suspect that the mount command either won’t complete or will give us garbage response.

[processor]

I can’t try right now because i’m not working but I can tell you there is no sda2, only sda1.
Sda1 seen as reserved partition by fog client when I try to capture the disk.
I’ll try what you ask tomorrow morning.

[george1421]

@processor said in Wrong Image Size indicated in the image manager.:

I can tell you there is no sda2, only sda1

There is only one partition on that disk? This is a windows computer right? If there is no sda2 then just run the other commands, that will give us a better picture of your disk layout.

[processor]

@george1421

I did what you asked these are the screenshots :

So as you see one partition, and it content is visible.

I did further tests :

-HD Base mode, with 1 reserved partition and an OS partition : Resizing OK
-HD Base mode, with 1 Partition only for the OS : Resizing KO, partition detected as reserver even if it’s not
-HD Dynamic mode, with 1 partition or more : Resizing OK, but with this message : ldm_parse_tocblock() cannot find tocblock, I don’t yet know if deploy work with the created image did not had time to test yet and it seems the capture is longer.

Any idea why FOG detected a solo win10 partition on a base disk as reserved?

[george1421]

@processor While I see it, I don’t believe it. I’ve never seen a windows install with just a single partition (after Windows NT). Is there another disk in the system because the boot partition is missing or this is a strange MBR disk.
The fact that there is only one partition may be confusing FOG’s logic because the first partition of a windows disk is always fixed in size. How did you create this disk layout?

[processor]

@george1421
I don’t know, it’s been done by a colleague of mine. But as far as I know users here install base OS with genuine Microsoft sources, clicking next, next . But I think we have the same behavior with our 2K16 base capture.

Is there any possibility to avoid the detection as reserved partition by command line in debug mode for instance? Or do we have to rebuild the bases and the full images we’ve done with this unconventional disk organization?

Bad news for us converting base disk to dynamic make the capture resizable , but can’t deploy it on another machine.

[Junkhacker]

@george1421 said in Wrong Image Size indicated in the image manager.:

I’ve never seen a windows install with just a single partition (after Windows NT)

…but that was the standard for xp and 2000 pro. it was also easy to configure with windows 7, even though it wasn’t the default.

[george1421]

@Junkhacker Right, but windows 10 should never do that. I’m not even sure I can make it create just one big partition. I know bitlocker as well as uefi system’s can’t boot from that disk structure.

My intuition is telling me to start over and do it right because this structure will bite you in the backside in the future like with a feature upgrade.

[processor]

@george1421
May be because we use Legacy boot and not UEFI?

[Junkhacker]

@george1421 uefi systems definitely couldn’t use it, but i don’t see any reason it wouldn’t be possible with windows 10. sure wouldn’t recommend it though. it just really threw me off when you said you hadn’t seen single partition setups since NT

[Junkhacker]

@processor even with legacy boot, this is far from the default setup

[george1421]

@Junkhacker said in Wrong Image Size indicated in the image manager.:

single partition setups since NT

FWIW: I believe NT and Win2000 use the same kernel. But I could be wrong there too, that was almost 20 years ago you know.