Intel EXPI9301CTBLK & FOG / Hardware compat wiki page?

[danboid]

I’ve just had a look on the FOG wiki and I’m disappointed to see there is not a list of FOG (in)compatible PCI(e) network cards. We should create one, or maybe the inverse ie a list of network cards known NOT to work with FOG. Users could list which OS version(s) they know a certain chipset does (not) work with.

I suspect most PCI(e) and onboard NICs over a certain age will work but we just got 15 new desktop machines and their onboard NICs don’t work with FOG. It would be nice to know the NIC is FOG friendly if we’re buying 15+ so can anyone confirm that the Intel Gigabit PRO EXPI9301CTBLK 1000CT works with FOG?

Thanks

[george1421]

@danboid The short answer is if the Linux kernel has a driver for it, the network adapter will work. Its not possible for the FOG Project to certify every hardware adapter, there simply isn’t enough active people in the project to support that action.

With that said I haven’t found a network adapter yet that FOS Linux doesn’t support natively or can’t be added via the one-off kernel. A key for success on your part is to keep the FOS Linux kernel up to date on your fog server. This is done via the web ui -> FOG Configuration -> Kernel update. To support contemporary hardware make sure you have the 5.15.x series of kernels installed. A fresh install of FOG 1.5.9 will only install the 4.19.x series of kernels which are really out of date. When FOG 1.5.10 is released later this year it will come with 5.15.x series kernels by default.

So update the kernel to 5.15.x and try your network adapter works. If it does not then we can debug the issue. I’ve only seen server adapters and 25GB network adapters not work recently but that has been addressed with a one-off kernel.

[danboid]

@george1421

Thanks George!

I had seen people talking about updating the kernel on here but I presumed they meant the FOG server kernel but now I realise that the FOG kernel is distinct from the kernel used by the FOG server. After updating the FOG kernel via the web UI FOG seems to be working on our new machines.