FOG Community

[Tom Elliott]

All who feel like reading,

A little about me:
As all of those who have worked on FOG are blissfully aware, I am, like most people reading today, a human being. I’m a regular guy, from a small town, who works a full time job, and married. I work, currently, for a school district, and perform, as most of us here do, many of my imaging needs using FOG. As I am a human, I do make mistakes, quite often. I’m inundated with other tasks outside of work as well. I have a house to clean, bills to manage, and sleep to try to get. I do not, and will not attempt to or claim to, know everything. I don’t know everything about FOG either. I’m just a regular guy who uses this solution just like many of you do.

Help and Support (Me Helping You):
I am, now, a frequent visitor on the FOG Forums. I will continue to do so as long as you all will have me. When I’m helping out, it helps me expand my knowledge, troubleshooting, and keeps me calm. As I am a human (I think you got that from above), I do not always get everything right. I will try to assist you all in anyway I can. If I don’t answer your question, I probably don’t know the answer myself, or I don’t have enough information to try to help.

Help and support (You Helping Me):
If you’re up to the challenge of trying out the latest of FOG, and or interested in trying to help out with the FOG Project, the best suggestion I can give you all is to download, install, test, play/report. Test until your heart’s content. Please, if you notice an issue, report that issue, and try to be as specific as possible. It helps me narrow where the problem is. If you’ve found a fix for the problem, please also let me/us know what it was you did. You can even post the actual source files, so we don’t have to sift through lines of code.

Feature Requests:
As I’m developing/adding/making things work, there may be some minor revision changes on a, somewhat, regular basis. This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean I’m ready to start implementing Feature Requests. Right now, I’m focusing on getting the core, UI primarily, elements working and working properly. Once I know all the main elements of the UI are working properly, I’ll be digging deep, again, into the bowels of the actual item that performs the imaging (e.g. init.gz file.) I’ve added one feature request, the ability to delete a host within the FOG PXE Boot menu, as I think that is very useful. Eventually the Delete Script and the Register script will pass to one another, probably with another Script/PXE Option that will have Changing the Hostname options. Other than that, for now, I’m working on the main stuff. The main Feature, in due time, I want to add to the UI is an ability to download/upload configuration and DBSchema as this seems it should be a feature on something with this large a scale. (Only stating what I’m adding/implementing so you all know I hear you.)

Testing (I know I already covered this…kinda):
Please, if you’re testing, try out as many of the elements as possible on real world items. By this I mean, try Snap-ins, Printers, Active Directory, Service Configuration, etc… Try everything you can. There are some things I know about, and (more likely) things I don’t know about as current issues. The things I know about, please feel free to post the problem, I’ll try to let you all know I’m aware of it. The things I don’t know about, please post the problem. I can’t fix what I don’t know. With this, add the caveat that specificity is relatively important. We all, should at least, have heard of the Five W’s: Who, What, Where, When, and How. All I really should need to know is: What is the problem, What did you do to get the problem/How can I replicate the problem, and Where it’s suspected the problem is. The where is, semi-optional. Meaning you’re kind of covering it if you answer the How and the What part of the issues.

Understanding:
As I’m human, I do have a life besides work and FOG. I’m, thankfully, married to a very awesome wife who, more or less, lets me do what I love to do. While I am using much of my free time in trying to get FOG 0.33 released, there may be periods of heavy activity, and there may be periods of limited activity. If I, seemingly, go quiet for a little bit, chances are I’m working on a problem that’s stumped me. If I, seemingly, go quiet for a week or two, chances are I’m just performing life rituals and/or busy at work. If I, seemingly, go quiet for a long time, call the police or search and rescue.(J/K) Seriously, though, something tragic/devastating, or otherwise may have happened. I’ll try to make sure to inform this community if that last item should arise. I’ll probably even inform you if I expect to be out for more than a few days (not that I have to) so that you all know that work is still progressing.

Community:
I enjoy the community of FOG here, and have, hopefully, gotten a foothold of what I’m trying to express here. Together, we will make a fine product here.

Thank you all for reading,