Fog quick image password not working

[Strahd]

@sebastian-roth OK, now we are getting somewhere… With some testing, this seems to be a model specific issue.

HP 450 G2 Legacy mode - works
HP 450 G5 UEFI - works
HP 450 G7 UEFI - works
HP 450 G8 UEFI - not working - it boots normally but the username/password for quick deploy doesn’t work for some reason
The G8 bios does not support legacy mode so I can’t test that.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Strahd Have you checked to see if there is a firmware update available for the G8?

I am pretty sure the other time we had this issue discussed in the forums it was specific to one model as well. It’s really strange this doesn’t work on particular models.

When you type in the username and password field do you see the characters printed in screen?

[Strahd]

@sebastian-roth There’s a video link in this thread that shows the entire process.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a_FtsLZOHJ0EzV3UakXAaSmS_RMD7b5C/view?usp=sharing

Yes, it show characters being typed, and I get denied three times before it gives up and drops out. I have verified that I am typing the credentials correctly, and went as far as creating another admin account and it fails as well.

I will investigate a bios update. I know for a fact that there is a firmware update for this laptop - Microsoft Update is a delivery mechanism for this HP bios update, which is (in my opinon) pretty unusual.

[Strahd]

@sebastian-roth OK, did a bios update - that part was actually nice since the bios supports updating over ethernet without the need for an operating system or flash drive. Fog still fails, though, so that didn’t fix it. I can still deploy an image via scheduled task in the web UI, just not from the fog boot menu. It’s not a deal breaker but it would be nice to know what isn’t working.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Strahd Too bad the firmware update didn’t fix it. Well than you can dig into it by adding debug output to the iPXE menu code. Go to the FOG web UI -> FOG Configuration -> iPXE Menu Item Settings -> fog.deployimage -> Parameters:

login
params
param mac0 ${net0/mac}
param arch ${arch}
param username ${username}
param password ${password}
param qihost 1
### add this START ####
echo Username: ${username}
echo Password: ${password}
echo Please press ENTER to go ahead...
read prompt
### add this END ####
isset ${net1/mac} && param mac1 ${net1/mac} || goto bootme
isset ${net2/mac} && param mac2 ${net2/mac} || goto bootme

I think it should be pretty clear which part I added in between to print out the variables. I just tested this on my dev environment and it works just great no matter if I type in the correct or wrong credentials it prints it out before going ahead.

Update: Now when I look at the video again I guess you might not even get as far as this. So if it does not do the print out you can start adding simple lines of deugging between each of the existing lines to see when things start to fail.

login
echo Test1 && read test1
params
echo Test2 && read test2
...

[Strahd]

@sebastian-roth Ok, I took it a step further and added 2 more lines to your script, mostly to see if it wasn’t all zeroes or something:
echo mac0: ${net0/mac}
echo arch: ${arch}

Output data is as follows:
Username: fog
Password: xxxxxx
mac0: e0:70:ea:aa:95:dc
arch: x86_64
Please press ENTER to go ahead…

The output username and password are correct.
Additionally, after pressing enter on a WORKING computer (only), I very briefly see the following line:
http://10.46.10.40/fog/service/ipxe/boot.php… ok
The non-working computer does not show that line, but rather jumps back to the login prompt.

[Sebastian Roth]

@strahd said in Fog quick image password not working:

The non-working computer does not show that line, but rather jumps back to the login prompt.

Do I get this right? You see the debug output but not the “http://10.46.10.40/fog/service/ipxe/boot.php… ok” line?

Can you please add the following line to the very end:

goto bootme

That might really be a bug in our iPXE boot script generation!! I guess the G8 model has at least three network devices and that makes it skip the jump to the correct label after entering the password.

Great you did some further testing and we finally figured this one out. Can you imagine we did not run into this very simple issue for years and years?!?!?

[Strahd]

@sebastian-roth Awesome, this ALMOST fixed it. Good job!
I am now properly prompted to select the proper boot image, however when I press enter on that menu it just jumps back to the original pxe boot menu.

As for having more than three network devices… I did notice that HP added an option to pxe boot over wifi, which seemed like pretty new tech, though I’m not sure how that would work without adding lots of custom drivers, or something.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Strahd Ok, this one is pretty similar but it can only be fixed in the code. But before I ask you to update to the latest dev-branch version we should better try a manual fix for you. Can you please edit /var/www/fog/lib/fog/bootmenu.class.php and jump to line 1056 or search for “param imageID”.

Here is how the code should look like originally: https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/blob/master/packages/web/lib/fog/bootmenu.class.php#L1062

Please add that single one line (or all three if you add the comments as well) after line 1062 like this:

...
                        'param imageID ${imageID}',
                        'param qihost 1',
                        'param username ${username}',
                        'param password ${password}',
                        'param sysuuid ${uuid}',
                        'isset ${net1/mac} && param mac1 ${net1/mac} || goto bootme',
                        'isset ${net2/mac} && param mac2 ${net2/mac} || goto bootme',
// add line START
                        'goto bootme',
// add line END
                    );
                    unset($Image);

...

Just save the changes, no need to reboot the server or anything. Changes are life right away. If you mess with the code it will break PXE booting for any client.

[george1421]

@sebastian-roth said in Fog quick image password not working:

If you mess with the code it will break PXE booting for any client.

@Strahd if you get into a situation where the file doesn’t get updated correctly and its messed up, simply rerun the FOG installer script and it will fix (return it back to the standard programming code) things for you.