Host Registration
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I also noticed that this particular dell model has some dell utility partition which is 39MB in FAT file system, can it be that this does not let me to register the host?
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that could very well be the problem. Our computers are built with our own image, so when we image the machines, it wipes out the Dell utility partition. Just to test, have you tried the multi-partition option for the image?
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Hi Kevin: no I did not, I am even unable to register the machine, booting from pxe and able to see main fog menu, when doing quick or full registration just a black screen - that’s it.
You are saying that I need to create image template in fog web interface, and after this boot client from pxe to check how it works? I will test it but this is very strange way
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when you register the host, it needs to be tied to an image ID. If you haven’t set one up, it’ll throw some errors. So what you would do (for this sake, we’ll say it’s XP). You need to go into the web interface, setup an XP image, we’ll say it’s called ‘XP Domain’. When you register a client in FOG, it’ll get to a point where you can pick an image which should say something similar to ‘1- XP Domain’ and you would enter the number 1, and finish up. Then after you register it, you would go and upload the image to that template and officially load your image onto the server for that image ID.
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Have you tired manually entering the information into the FOG interface?
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[quote=“Kevin, post: 10415, member: 3”]when you register the host, it needs to be tied to an image ID. If you haven’t set one up, it’ll throw some errors. So what you would do (for this sake, we’ll say it’s XP). You need to go into the web interface, setup an XP image, we’ll say it’s called ‘XP Domain’. When you register a client in FOG, it’ll get to a point where you can pick an image which should say something similar to ‘1- XP Domain’ and you would enter the number 1, and finish up. Then after you register it, you would go and upload the image to that template and officially load your image onto the server for that image ID.[/quote]
I did this and yes I did it manually, created image template, register the host manually and tied it with image, create upload task and started client machine, it picked up fog meniu but did not upload the image to the server - just went to normal os boot.
So if I already registered host manually and tied it up with image (but host and image are not existing in real time yet) do I need to do a quick/full host registration on client machine?
Thanks for your help
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If I understand correctly, you used the web interface to define an image and a host. The host being tied to the image. What I did next is to create an upload task in Fog and when I reboot the host, it loads the Fog kernel and sends an image to Fog.
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Yes your understanding is correct. I did it just same way as you wrote here: created image template, register the host and tied with the image, when I’m registering a host it’s asking for host name: Do I need to put a real PC name? or I can leave like “PC” or “test” ?
Once I registered host manually and tied with the image I created upload task on this host. Started machine and was able to see fog menu and time just passed through and it booted to operating system.
I also tested another model: HP Compaq DC5750 - without manual registration. I tried to register it through the fog menu: quick and full registration. 100% the same thing: “atempting to send inventory…” THIS message disappeared and only black screen.
SO: I am unable to register the host through fog menu on quick and full registration and also unable to register the host manually by typing mac address in web interface.
Question: is firmware upgrade on this stage can be helpful? Any thoughts guys? Any other options how I can test what exactly is wrong? PXE and dhcp is working fine, when checking host compatibility everything is fine.
Thank you for your help.
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In Fog, we do match the Host name with the real PC name just to make it easy for ourselves, but I don’t think it is critical as Fog uses the MAC address to identify the computer. When the host boots, if the mac address does not match, it won’t be found and the task won’t execute.
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Thanks for reply
Basically how long it takes to register the host? I even don’t see any messages that fog was unable to register the host.
IS IT A MUST to install fog client on host which I want to register or this step is optional?
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It should be only moments to register the host with FOG. However, it is not required to install the FOG client on a machine. If you log into the web portion of FOG, all that the FOG client does is control everything under the ‘FOG Configuration’ tab. However, I did find this post which might help, [url]http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/189072-fog-wont-register-host[/url]
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I saw few similar posts, will check this on the server.
LAST UPDATE: I did BIOS update on dell optiplex gx520 with XP, manually registered host and created upload task.
After host reboot AT LAST saw some progress, it was an error: “failed to mount nfs volume, PC will reboot in 1 minute”
However it is still not working but now I am able to see more details
thanks for you patience, it’s more interesting now just can’t wait to make it up and running
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I did find this thread, [url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/fog-server-fatal-error-failed-to-mount-nfs-volume.115/[/url] I also found a KB article on the Wiki that might help a bit as well, [url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Image_Upload:_Error_Checking_Mount[/url]
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[quote=“Kevin, post: 10468, member: 3”]I did find this thread, [url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/fog-server-fatal-error-failed-to-mount-nfs-volume.115/[/url] I also found a KB article on the Wiki that might help a bit as well, [url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Image_Upload:_Error_Checking_Mount[/url][/quote]
Great, thanks. I created upload task yesterday and got this error, now deleted the image template and existing host from web interface. Switched on the same host to run quick host registration to see how bios update affected registration methods, but host tried to upload the image to the server again - here is now active tasks anymore but it still trying to upload the image, while another machines with old bios still attempting to register the host. Will update bios on another machine and will test quick/full registration methods.
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FOG server was rebuilt and now quck/full registration methods are working fine.
Once fog server was built IP was changed few times, it seems like it was main problem.
Thanks.
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That would very well cause a problem
glad to hear that you got it working for you now. -
[quote=“Kevin, post: 10591, member: 3”]That would very well cause a problem
glad to hear that you got it working for you now.[/quote]Kevin,
I just built image and saved on the server, now I’m restoring another machine from this image.
I was wondering how I can restore 10 or more machines per time, I created a group for this and successfully deployed an image to machines - great.
Thanks
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You can try to multicast to the machines. This will push the image 1 time to all 10 machines at the same time, saving bandwidth. But you are correct, you need to have every machine registered in FOG prior to try and multicast. So, for instance, I would take all of those machines and put them in a group, which for example we’ll call Lab A. Once a group has been created, you can then go to the Group management tab, select Lab A and set the memberships, image ID’s etc to the specific group. Once this is done, you go to Task Management > List All Groups and select Multicast from Lab A. From there, imaging would be like normal once all the machines pxe boot.
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I like this multicast option if it will save bandwidth - good one.
I’m trying to sysprep xp machine because need to have different pc names and ssid after restore.
But when running ‘fogprep.exe’ I receive 3 different errors and now I see that:
[FONT=Ubuntu][COLOR=#333333][B][CENTER]FOG Prep[/CENTER][/B][/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Ubuntu][COLOR=#333333]Download FOG Prep which must be run on computers running Windows 7 immediately prior to image upload. [/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Ubuntu][COLOR=#333333] [/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Ubuntu][COLOR=#333333]If this tool is only for windows7 how can I solve this on xp?[/COLOR][/FONT] -
FOGprep should only be used on Windows 7 machines. For XP, you need to extract sysprep from deploy.cab. This file can be downloaded from here: [url]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11282[/url]. (Going from memory at this point) But you then run the setupmgr and it’s literally a step by step process to setup a generic image for your machines. However, once you are done, make sure you back up the folder these files sit in. The folder with the sysprep info in it is automatically deleted once the computer is re-imaged. If you need more help, I can try and get a write up done tonight or tomorrow on how to get an XP system sysprepped.