Running Fog Server To Image Different Devices Without Internet (Using Switch)
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I am trying to run a testbed to test malwares on different operating systems. This is to save me time to reconfigure the operating systems each time I run a malware therefore, I created a Fog Server running on Debian 10.3 on a PC. Now, I want to upload images from 4 different PC’s without using the internet.Each PC runs a different version of Microsoft OS( 10 Pro,8.1 Pro, 7 Ultimate, XP Pro). But, I am clueless on how to upload them without using the internet. I need guidance on how else can I do this. Plus, I only heard about Fog yesterday so, i followed a youtube video to set up the server.
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Imaging with FOG doesn’t require the internet. The PC’s have to be on the same network and you need a DHCP server of some type that allows you to add option 66 and 67 for boot file name and boot file server.
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@Fog_Newb Thank you. But, is there a DHCP server setting for Debian 10? Most of the tutorials that I have seen setting up servers in Windows which is fairly easy because of their network setting.
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FOG relies on multiple opensource technologies working together to make a complete imaging system.
In your case once the FOG server is configured, you need to update your dhcp server for your network to configure the dhcp settings to allow pxe booting. In this case if you have an existing dhcp server just update dhcp options 66 to the IP address of your fog server, and dhcp option 67 to the proper boot strap loader for the hardware. For bios based systems dhcp option 67 should be undionly.kpxe and for uefi based systems ipxe.efi. Once that is configured then you will need to change the firmware to pxe boot first then hard drive. So you will want to change the boot order to pxe first hard drive second.
There is a wiki page on what to do after you have the fog server setup. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Booting_into_FOG_and_Capturing_your_first_Image
You specifically asked about dhcp server settings for ubuntu, here is an example on the wiki page. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/BIOS_and_UEFI_Co-Existence#Example_1
NOW with that said, if you only have 4 systems you are interested in imaging then FOG may be the wrong tool for you. FOG is intended for 100s of target computers. If you have only 4 or 5 systems you are trying to protect Clonezilla may be a better solution for you. It boots from a usb flash drive and allows you to backup the image to a usb hard drive. No network is involved everything is done locally on the PC.
One last thing to clarify, FOG only needs internet access to install FOG server. Once the FOG server is installed the internet is not needed. FOG does need to have a local LAN connection to image the computers.
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Yes you can run the DHCP server on the same FOG// Debian machine. I am new to Linux and don’t know much about setting up a DHCP server on that. I used Windows for the DHCP server.
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@george1421 Thank you for the links. But, I am now facing an issue with installing the Fog clients. I downloaded the MSI installer in my windows XP and configured the server address. But, it keeps giving error of installation ending prematurely. Is this probably due to my DHCP server not set up properly?
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@Reuban1219 said in Running Fog Server To Image Different Devices Without Internet (Using Switch):
it keeps giving error of installation ending prematurely. Is this probably due to my DHCP server not set up properly?
The DNS has nothing to do with the fog client installing or not. It probably more likely that there is a dependency missing like dotnet or something. I don’t know much about the fog client, but you might try the .exe instead of the MSI. The other thing with the MSI, you should be able to define a log file. Its possible that the MSI installer will write what it doesn’t like to the log file. The msi command switch to create a log file is
/L*V <path_to_log_file_and_name>i.e./L*V c:\windows\temp\foglog.txt -
@Reuban1219 said in Running Fog Server To Image Different Devices Without Internet (Using Switch):
I downloaded the MSI installer in my windows XP …
I am not exactly sure the fog-client was used on XP much. That was before I joined into working on the fog-client. Though I would think it should work.
But, it keeps giving error of installation ending prematurely.
Can you be more specific on what step it ends and what the error message is? If you don’t get an error back you should use logging as suggested by George. Open a cmd as Admin and run:
msiexec /i FOGService.msi /quiet USETRAY="1" HTTPS="0" WEBADDRESS="x.x.x.x" WEBROOT="/fog" ROOTLOG="1" /L*V c:\windows\temp\foginstalllog.txtPut in the FOG server IP or hostname instead of
x.x.x.x. Upload that log file to a file share and post a link here.
