Latest FOG 0.33b
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Vincent,
The only problem with sysprep, unless rearmed, is you can only perform a sysprep up to 3 times. As you state you work at a school, I’m under the assumption, please correct me if I’m wrong, you work similar to the way my workplace does it. We create a base image that has all the necessary software all schools within our district need. (In your case I’m assuming this is one sysprep – unless there was something wrong with this and there were multiple other syspreps performed.) However, the way this base is created is probably using the manufacturer disc for OS install and chances are you don’t use Audit mode? This is technically another sysprep which Already means, theoretically, you’re at two syspreps for the Base image (Unless, again, somebody else sysprepped another time).
This means it only leaves you with one more sysprep before you’ve even been able to create your image for your school.
The way we create images at our school is we create, what I like to call, the Super Base. This is the base with all common software(s) installed on the system between all of the schools. Then we create the Base image for the school the image is going to be in place for, as these software needs change from High School/Middle School/Elementary School.
We don’t sysprep, yet, where we work, but we also aren’t using drives smaller than our initial image. I’ll look into testing some new commands to see if we have to sysprep a resizable image for Windows 7. This way, I’ll know whether or not it’s even possible. There’s a command I’ve been waiting to play with called partclone.ntfsfixboot that I imagine may do the trick for us. As far as extending systems with larger drives than the image was created on, I’m going to leave that up to the individual to fix/or not fix for now.
I know I’d love to be able to create a resizable, non-sysprepped, image for Windows 7, and maybe even Windows 8 as needed. (though I’m still waiting for Windows 8 to come in.)
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Just in the middle of a test run with 0.33b r1050
I’ve got 12 test VMs and an Exemplar, one of the VMs has a smaller HDD than the exemplar, two that have bigger HDDs, the rest are identical to the exemplar.
I am deploying a Multi Partition image (non resizable) from the exemplar to all 12 VMs unicast.
I was expecting 1 failure… but the VM I was expecting to fail imaged correctly.
my windows 7 is installed on a single partition (no 100mb one) that is about 2/3 of the exemplar disk. No sysprep.
So it seems that moving to partclone may yield a way to deploy images to smaller hardware by setting the image to use less of the HDD and then expand later. The difference in my system is only 1gb (31GB, 32GB, 33GB disks) so may need to see if this works with even smaller disks as my partition is only 19.43GB.
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If that works, it’s an unexpected quirk. It’s awesome none-the-less, but I’m a little worried about what affect the MBR is having on the smaller drives. Does the original size still hang in the balance on both smaller and larger drives?
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r1051,
Starting to, try as I might, add french language translation. As I’ve updated the searching points of where to search for _() enclosed tags, I’m also having to add many more things to the translations we currently have. If anybody wants to have a go at it, I can post the .pot file and have others perform the translations for me. (Of course only if you have enough time.) If you are interested in doing this, let me know. When the translations are complete, please post the completed file and what language it was translated to.
r1052 released to fix a typo I found in the TaskScheduler service file. Also, it corrects the placement of the $deploySnapin utility so it actually works when it’s supposed to.
In case you’re all wondering, I performed a diff of revision 899 to current release, I’ve apparently made over 250,000 changes/edits/modifications to get things working. Hope you’re all enjoying.
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Well, Looks like it’s successfully deployed to a 25gb HDD as well.
What do you want me to check on the MBR RE your concerns?
Anyone else replicated this behaviour?going to start some tests using the fog client etc soon and may even get around to making a snapin to expand the drive after deployment.
One slightly annoying thing (for me) is that when you set the storage server to Max Clients 1 (which I am doing to try and increase speed on my storage) it still ends up deploying 2 at once sometimes… Yes I know it seems strange, but with a single disk if I do too many it slows down to double digits per minute and I would rather not be waiting a whole day for a test run to complete.
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All,
I’m currently implementing, in my own processing of methods, a form of templates of all the text that needs translating. With this, it has given me a great amount of insight in how to build the menu’s and submenus. I’ve been able to create much smaller codes to deal with the actual generation of the menu items and sub menu items, as well as notes.
My thought here, is to have all required translatable text in one file for easy modification/addition as necessary. The langauages folder still does all the tasks, but this, in the future, could be easily switched.
Just giving some insight into what I’m trying to accomplish at the moment. Right now it’s just in testing as I still have to add all the needed menu items.
Bare with me on this though. Is it the best? I don’t know yet, but it seems to process things much faster than the original methods as everything text related is stored in variables, which means it’s quick to access.
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Turning all the text into variables loaded from a file is probably the easiest way to do the translation.
The language setting determines the file it reads and as long as the variables correspond it should work.
as long as a translation is available it’s easy to add… and you may get things done slightly faster/with less processing power if the same variable is used multiple times.
Do you think the pxe menu will be as easy to translate?
Having an option where the pxe image displays but doesn’t display unless you push a certain set of keys would be useful as well.
Sometimes people see the custom logo and start pushing buttons and then wonder why their PC doesn’t boot. No matter how many times you tell them to let the PC boot up they will bash things anyway… -
You could setup hidemenu which is on the PXE Boot Menu page from FOG Configuration the ? symbol.
At least they don’t start bashing things away as they just need to wait for it to boot.
The PXE menu should be easy to translate, if and when you setup using this same option. The text is ready for gettext translation, so long as we have a corresponding po/mo file in the proper directory with the proper information, the text would be translated before being written to the file.
With my rewrites, translation will be, ultimately, broken, until we get the files recreated. That’s part of why I’m trying to limit the translated need of words. Currently the FOG Web page requires 1414 translations. But there are a lot of double taps, such as:
Snapin Updated!
Host Updated!
Group Updated!If we use Snapin, Host, and Group as individual variables:
$this->foglang[‘Group’] = _(‘Group’)
$this->foglang[‘Host’] = _(‘Host’)
$this->foglang[‘Snapin’] = _(‘Snapin’)Then call the Updated! part as:
$this->foglang[‘MsgUpdated’] = _(‘%s Updated!’)
Then, on the corresponding pages, you call the things as:
sprintf($this->foglang[‘MsgUpdated’],$this->foglang[‘Group’])
This sounds like it’s more work, but it means, one file contains all the text. Changes are made that much easier. Translating is still difficult as it still requires a translated form of the original message, but I can pass one file around, that I know contains the text, that needs to be translated.
I could do that with a .pot file as well, but generating the file may come up with some erroneous tags as it needs to search all files with the entire fog web directory.
With this updated model, I just need to point it at the text file and have it go.
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The only problem could occur if certain languages have differences and you want a ‘perfect’ translation.
Having ‘Group’ next to ‘Updated’ may work in one situation but not another. One language may need Updated before group or something else. But the question is… is having translations that may be slightly interesting, but understandable ‘Good Enough’?
Has there been any discussion with chuck about a freeze for a release? Adding in translatability is a big job re-writing basically every file to include variables. It’s been 2 Years 5 Months since 0.32 was released and it would be nice to get something stable on the site so that more people can benefit from fog.
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r1053 relased.
Gives us the preliminary bits as I’ve described above. The only pages this makes direct changes to, so far, is Dashboard, and the Menu (Main and Sub) menu structures.
I know it won’t be perfect, but please test it.
Thank you,
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Just in the middle of a test run… Storage set to max clients 1 but now 6 are running simultaneously. down to 62MB/M on one VM
Client hasn’t changed a hostname yet either.
I’ve tried manually running the client, increasing ram on the client PC, manually restarting the service. nothing working at all.
Will leave the test to complete and check hostnames after they’ve sat for a while… see if any of them do anything.
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Hostname is done early by default, meaning before the system reboots after a deploy task. If it’s not changed maybe there’s another issue that needs to be looked at. The other worry of mine is the queued client status. I may need to request your fog servers apache error log when the tasks are running to see what errors are being spit at us.
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OK, Can it be changed to use the fog client again? I will also need the Active Directory Join part of that as well. Changing early might be nice but seems like it’s building a feature that FOG already has, unless there will be some other way to join AD in FOG and do all of the other nice features in the client.
If you want access I can PM you the details you need.
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Join ad still works fine. The hostname changer was added to make imaging that little bit faster. However you can turn off the early feature within the fog configuration fog settings hostname_early bit.
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In your test setups does the rename early work as expected?
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Vincent,
It looks like it is imaging and changing the name as expected. Though I suspect, if you’re imaging from Registration Scripts this will not work. There was a problem, that even I didn’t know existed, until I looked deeper into the code and tried finding everything that was needed.
My next revision should address this for us all.
r1054 addresses this.
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When I setup, I pre-stage all the host’s MAC addresses into fog. I then add them to a group and start the deploy task using the group. The only thing I do on the client machine is turn it on.
This matches how I setup my production setup where we used the DHCP leases to identify the MAC of every PC and then had one of the trainees set the PCs to PXE boot. When we buy new machines, the MAC is written on the box so I enter those as well and as soon as they are unpacked and plugged in… they run the task that I created for them.
I will nuke my Debian FOG server and remake it with r1054 and try again.
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You don’t need to nuke to go to the latest. Just perform an update. Basically, download the latest and greatest. Then re-run the bin/installfog.sh script. It will automatically update everything for you. As I haven’t made any changes to the Schema, Database information should remain in-tact.
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It seems that the buttons on the GUI are missing… possibly something to do with the new language stuff.
When I installed I selected not to install language packs.[ATTACH=full]464[/ATTACH]
[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/0/464_GUIMissing.png?:”]GUIMissing.png[/url]
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Try it again. I noticed that issue as well. Updated the files to fix the issue. You should be good to go.
r1055.
