A handful of feature requests
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There are a few things that i think could be added to FOG that could make it much more robust. and i was wondering if there were any plans to add these features.
User Management controls
The ability to restrict fog users and/or groups of fog users to certain types of activities for certain host groups would be very handy.
What I am imagining is a setup where user group “equipment checkout” could re-image their loaner laptops at will, but couldn’t do anything to faculty/staff computers. A user could be allowed to deploy any computer in the “undeployed” computer group but were not allowed the “upload” an image back to the server (and if newly registered hosts could be added to a group by default, it would be even better). A user in the “helpdesk” user group could create tasks of virus scan or memtest, and that is all.
I know this would be complicated and i don’t know if other organizations would use it like i’m suggesting, but i wanted to throw the idea out there.Image Management
The Image Management page tells you what size an image will be when deployed, but not how much space it is actually taking up on the server, in it’s compressed size. Knowing how much space the image takes up on disk would be handy for managing how full your storage gets.Generalize BCD while uploading image.
One of the reasons systems have to be sysprep-ed before taking their image with FOG is because the computer will throw a 0xc000000e error otherwise. many people don’t like to do a full sysprep of their image. replacing the BCD file with one that has been “generalized” will prevent this issue. Generalizing the BCD is one of the things sysprep does, and the computer will automatically modify a generalized BCD to it’s proper configuration on next boot. If the existing BCD file on a windows machine is replaced with one like in the zip file attached, the computer should boot fine.[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/0/519_generalized-BCD.zip?:”]generalized-BCD.zip[/url]
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Junkhacker,
Image Management already contains the image size, though it works by getting it from the image upload process. Right now it constantly update, but I’ll be adding in checking to verify which is larger, update if the current element is larger than the one in the database.
Generalized BCD is the holy grail, though I’d imagine it would still cause issues as the system, as a whole, doesn’t know that it’s been generalized. Has this been tested? Other than that, the sysprep process is not currently needed on MPS and MPA formats, as far as I can tell. This, I imagine, is the normal method of imaging anyway. Sysprepping Windows 7 before ntfsresize is still needed, as far as I can tell, but I’ll take a look at your zip file. How do I add this to the scripts?
User/User Group Management
I’ve already been working the base practices of this. Ultimately, if I understand the process people are looking for, the options available need to vary depending on the “level” set to that particular user. Right now, User Groups aren’t available and it would require more tables in the database to manage between. It’s not perfect, but I’m working on it slowly. -
So the “Image Size” is supposed to be how much space it takes up on your server, not how large of a hard disk is required to accept the image? At present, my management console says that my images are roughly twice the size of the files stored on the server. I have Fog running in a virtual computer with a relatively small hard drive assigned to it right now, and if the console was to be believed, my server’s drive is over 100% full.
I do not know how to add the BCD file to the scripts. at present i have been either replacing the system’s BCD file with the one i’ve sent you before i pull the image, or manually replacing it from a a live boot disk environment on the end machine (if i forgot to replace the file before uploading the image to the server). I wish i could find the forum to link to where i found this info, but apparently all sysprep-ed BCD files are the same, one works for all. By replacing the existing BCD file with the one i’ve sent you (which is just a BCD file that has been renamed), Single Partition Resizable works for windows 7, though I’ll admit I’ve only tested it on about 3 computers so far. I have only been using the Single Partition option so far. I was just hoping for maybe a checkbox in the upload and deploy screens for replacing the BCD with the “generalized” file. If you’d like a nice tool for comparing/editing BCD files, I recommend Bootice.
for the User/User Group Management
I can imagine people wanting more control over users beyond a sliding scale “level” of access. But user access control scheme’s get complicated fast. maybe a feature to work on for version 0.34?btw, is there goals/progress info for the next “stable” release? It would be nice to see a checklist of features/bugs that are to be added, and the progress toward them. It may also help people to know where and what they need to help with.
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The “Image Size” I’ve been providing is directly how large partclone is reporting the Device Size is. So you would need a drive with at least that size + a little more. There’s no way, for now, to pull all the image size (rec.img.000) size AND (sys.img.000) size, or d1p#.img sizes. It’s not 100% accurate, but should give a fairly good indication of the size needs.
BCD I’m aware of that, but it would mean, image, mount proper drive location, interject the bcd where necessary, and much verification. I’ll try to take time this weekend and test that it works, but it’s no guarantee.
User Management is a goalgoal. I plan to introduce some types of RBAC for users and, maybe later on, groupings of rbacs similar to AD, but less complex.
I don’t have a goals/progress. I’m just a guy who started trying to get the community back up and excited. I’ve been working fairly hard, but I don’t know what all the expectations are. I know the main feature to add before a “stable” release is Windows 8 support. That’s where I’m stuck and I’m sure others are as well.
