Suggestion please

[george1421]

@ziolucione said in Suggestion please:

I usually need to re/image 10 tablets at the same time, so I cannot rely on the below workflow.

What if I go back to the wifi process?

I would question the logic of attempting to image 10 systems at a time over wifi. Remember its a shared resource (wifi bandwidth). While I don’t have any basis for this opinion, but I think imaging 5 systems over wifi at the same time would be slower than imaging 10 systems sequentially over a wired connection. I can say I can push out a 25GB image over wired in about 3 minutes, that’s on a well managed 1GbE network. Wifi is still in the 100Mb/s range (shared).

So let me ask you this. Once the systems are imaged, will you managed them with FOG or are you working as a VAR system reseller? Because FOG has a process (that i call load and go), in that you can deploy images to a target system that FOG will forget about once the image has been deployed. You won’t be able to manage them after the OS is deployed with FOG and you don’t have to register the target computer with FOG. You basically load the OS and take the target computer somewhere else (go).

If you wan to go down the wifi route we can, its not easy but its not really that hard either. It will take some technical skills on your end because we (I) will have to create a custom FOS Linux kernel for your deployment. This will be a hardware specific build so it will help if all of the tablets are alike, or at least have the same wifi adapter. I still think having multiple usb ethernet adapters is the way to go none the less.

[ziolucione]

@george1421 Hi george,
Exactly, I do not need to manage the tablets once I have imaged or re-imaged them.
Can I have more more info about this ‘load & go’ project?
And also, our image should be very thin (approx 5~7 GB) so using the wifi shouldn’t be an issue - also, the tablets have all the same HW specs - this can change like in 2/3 years time, so probably I will need to upgrade the process in the future.

Thank you for your support guys.

Regards.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione To go with the wireless kernel, I need to know the hardware ID of your wireless network adapter. From the windows side go into the device manager and get the vendor and hardware ID of the wireless adapter and post it here.

[ziolucione]

@george1421

Network adapter:
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3165

Hardware Id:
PCI\VEND_8086&DEV_3165&SUBSYS_80108086&REV_91

Thank you.
L.

[Quazz]

@ziolucione You don’t have to register the devices if you just want to deploy an image.

If you boot into PXE you can then select Deploy image from the FOG menu, select the correct image and it will deploy the image.

Probably easier to integrate in your workflow than a wifi setup.

[ziolucione]

Hi @Quazz
I don’t have any PXE boot feature on these tablets, that’s why I am using the FOS built by george. And the issue is related to the MAC address attached to the USB network adapter I am using. So each terminal will be recognized as the previous one and I cannot choose what image to deploy (because it has been registered to use that image the first time I have used the adapter).
That’s why I’d prefer to explore the wifi workflow instead.

Thank you for the support.
Regards.
L.

[Quazz]

@ziolucione If there is no task planned for that MAC, it should boot to the FOG menu, no? You’d choose the image to deploy on the tablets themselves if that makes sense.

But if you prefer to handle it from WebUI then the wifi route is the way to go.

[ziolucione]

@Quazz Hi Quazz,
where is this FOG menu entry in the FOS USB linux sub-system?
If I select the first option it is going to capture or deploy, depending on what I have selected form the FOG server UI on that terminal (registered).

There is no item listed where I can select the image ID.

Thank you.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione OK here we go with this session…

It appears that the wifi solution is not totally complete. We got it functional but not nice. The OP I was working with at the time had linux skills so I worked on the hard bits and he got it working.

So lets do the hard bits first.
Here is a wifi kernel. I have about a 70% confidence in this kernel build. It seems like each wifi adapter needs its own firmware. Once we identify the firmware I can build it into the kernel. I’ve included the firmware I “think” it needs based on the device number.

We will use the FOS Linux boot drive you created previously for this. Here is the kernel https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aQcwnDOSeX14Lz4vDU4eXBGQlzs8UZ18 download that as bzImage and copy that to the usb flash drive replacing bzImage on that drive. Be mindful of the case because it IS important.

As for the virtual hard drive lets start with this one. https://drive.google.com/open?id=13NYcilNuw0bBRpV7OL7nBZZLcrcThUDq download this and save it at init.xz onto the fog server (not in the ipxe path, but some other location. You will need to work on it.)

We are going to use this process: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Modifying_the_Init_Image

xz -d init.xz
mkdir initdir
mount -o loop init initdir

Now from here you need to change to ./initdir/etc directory and edit the wpa_supplicant file. In that file edit ssid=“ssid_name” change the ssid_name to match your wifi ssid. Edit #psk=“password” remove the preceding # and replace password with your wifi password. Save and exit the file.

Now repack the inits. Change back to the base directory where you unpacked the inits.

umount initdir
rmdir initdir
xz -C crc32 -9 init

That should recreate init.xz file. Move that file to the usb flash drive replacing the existing init.xz on the flash drive.

Now usb boot FOS linux. At the Grub boot menu select option 6 to Debug. After a few screens of text where you need to clear with an enter key, you will be dropped to a linux command prompt. At this prompt key in ip addr show to see if you picked up an IP address from your network. If you get to this point good or bad, post your results.

[george1421]

@ziolucione said in Suggestion please:

There is no item listed where I can select the image ID.

This menu item is not present with booting FOS Linux from a flash drive. This is a function of the iPXE menu that we don’t have. Don’t worry, I have a trick for this too, but lets get wifi working first.

[ziolucione]

@george1421 Hi, tried option 6 and I have gotUnable to mount root fs on unknow block
Kernel offset: disabled
Not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknow block.

No CLI after this, it’s just frozen at this point.
Any thoughts?

Regards.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione Please wait for a bit. I’m working out the solution. It appears that I did not save the previous work I did on this so I have to start over again with the virtual hard drive. No worries I should have it done in the next few hours.

[Sebastian Roth]

@ziolucione Which version of FOG do you have installed?

@george1421 Just wondering if this is a RAMDISk size issue as well?

[ziolucione]

@Sebastian-Roth Hi Sebastian,
I have pulled the master branch from Git.

Thank you @george1421

Thanks guys.
Lucio

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth said in Suggestion please:

Just wondering if this is a RAMDISk size issue as well?

Possible depending on the config file settings. Once I have it perfected I’ll create a FOS boot image of it so the settings are right.

[george1421]

@ziolucione Well lets start with this image: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1trOHt0B3X1SUYTVczYxs1TI3qQWC06Sy

This is a usb boot image that has been adjusted for wifi. Download the image and then “burn” to a usb flash drive using RUFUS like the previous one you did. Edit the /boot/grub/grub.cnf file as before setting your fog server’s ip address as well as ssid (wireless name) and ssidpw (wifi password) values. Save the grub config file then usb boot into the grub menu. Select option 6 (debug) and then boot to the fos linux comand prompt. If you see it mentioning the wireless lan adapter name (in my test case it was wlp2s0) during the startup process then we have some luck.

When you get to the command prompt key in ip addr show. Hopefully you will have an ip address for your wireless adapter. If not, then we need to debug a bit more.

For debugging we need to review the file /var/log/messages, near the middle of the file should be the code where it loads the wifi driver (in the case of the intel adapters the drivers should start with il). If you look just past that section you may see something about firmware for the wireless adapter and it needed a specific version of firmware, I need to know that specific version of firmware. I should have it loaded in the kernel already but your network adapter is an intel 3165 and I only found the firmware for the 3160 model so I loaded that hoping the base model is 3160. The messages file will tell us what the network adapter needs.

I’ve tested this image on a Dell 7240 and a e6230 and it works correctly on my home wifi that uses wpa2 for security. The boot image is not complete, but if this part doesn’t work then the rest is of no value.

[ziolucione]

@george1421 Hi guys,
I have tried this new image and I have no more errors, I have reached the CLI, but no network device is found.

Regards.
L.

[george1421]

@ziolucione As I mentioned in the debugging steps, you need to review the /var/log/messages file. You should see where it loads the network drivers after it loads the intel network drivers there probably will be a mention of needing specific firmware. When I get to work, I’ll boot the image on a different dell computer that’s missing the firmware to show you exactly what I’m looking for, but we are pretty close to a solution now.

[Sebastian Roth]

@ziolucione While you are on the CLI please run the following commands, take pictures (!) and post her:

lspci -nn
dmesg | grep -i -e eth -e wifi -e 80211

[ziolucione]

@george1421 Hi, I was looking into it.

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Thanks guys.
L.