Capone and Multicasting not possible?
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I’ve been working on this imaging server to deploy 300+ clients. They all have the exact same hardware. Someone suggested I used Capone Plugin to deploy my image and use the DMI to identify it. That way I don’t have to register all of my clients beforehand.
I have come to an issue that I didn’t consider before: multicasting. Capone doesn’t support it. Imaging 3 clients at a time is taking significantly longer than what it would take on a multicast. And even then, if I set a limit to a max of, say 2 hosts at a time, it completely ignores this limit.
Is there a way I can force feed an image to anybody that will connect to server and keep the multicast functionality?
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I don’t know what you’re trying to do.
You want the fog server to have a consistent stream of multicast senders setup to image systems off the pure chance somebody might be trying to connect?
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Hey Tom, I’m sorry if I am being such a drag. I really don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m a hardware guy and all of this is out of my league.
In a few weeks time I will image 300+ client machines. It will be a one off thing. I would like to image around 20 at a time. I am currently testing my setup in the lab. It works with single imaging. Takes about 2 minutes to download the image. I went into the multicast settings and I wanted to test imaging 3 machines (but only 2 at a time). This is not working. It begins imaging all 3 simultaneously and the download process becomes very VERY slow.
I do not have the mac address for all the machines for me to preload onto the server. And having to register every machine with the server before imaging is not a viable option. Capone works just fine to deploy one image tied to a DMI, but without the multicast option, I can’t imagine deploying 20 machines at a time.
Once I’m done with the 300+ machines, the server will go back to the lab to image 1 at a time.
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For the time being, I just need to mass deploy ONE single image to 300+ clients. Clients which I do not have their mac addresses to pre-register.
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Any suggestions on how I can accomplish this?
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why is registering them not a viable option?
since you’re running svn, you can set fog.reg as the default boot item and they’ll all register themselves on the next reboot. no need to do it manually -
I say that it is not an option only because it requires me to login and asign the image to each host. This is going to be done in a manufacturing floor and the less I ask the assembly house to so, the less it will cost me.
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Capone can help me deploy the image without registering the host, bit it doesn’t support Multicast.
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i’m not sure i understand your situation. are you manufacturing the computers, or having them manufactured? is the fog server at the manufacturer or in house? will you be managing these computers in the future, or is it a one time process?
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Junkhacker,
The computers are used inside my product. The whole product will be assembled at a manufacturing house. The computers themselves come with blank hard drivers. I need to load the image I created that includes software tools for testing our hardware and other diagnostics tools. The server is mine, and I will setup the whole thing at the manufacturing house house.
This will be a single occurrence. I do not need to keep this computers as registered hosts, as there is almost 0% chance my server will see them again. And even if I do, of course I could go through the process of registering them, or even use Capone to deploy an image.
There are 300+ computers that need to be imaged as quickly as possible, with as little interaction from humans as possible. The process I had envisioned was simply to connect the final product to the switch, and have it imaged automatically as it is powered up, without having to navigate with a keyboard. Ideally I would have to image 20-30 hosts at a time, so Multicast would be a better option.
Capone and the SVN version have the correct setup I need, minus the multicast.
I hope this is a bit clearer.
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as you know what image is what.
Try latest svn.
I’ve made functionality of multicast joining. Not with capone, as that’s to hard to guess.
What you do:
[From GUI]
Go to image management page.Choose multicast image
Setup your needed parameters on the page presented.
Submit the form.
[From Client]
Boot unregistered system to boot menu.
Choose Join Multicast session option.
Type in your fog gui login and password.
Type in the name you set the session to in gui.
You should be good.
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ok, that clears things up quite a bit
do you have speed issues when doing multiple unicast (non-multicast) jobs simultaneously? why is capone by itself not a good option?
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[quote=“Junkhacker, post: 38995, member: 21583”]ok, that clears things up quite a bit
do you have speed issues when doing multiple unicast (non-multicast) jobs simultaneously? why is capone by itself not a good option?[/quote]
Yes, with 3 hosts it slowed down significantly. I need to test adding more hosts and see how it will perform, but 20 at a time will be far from optimal. I do know that multicast will never be as fast as single unicast, but should be better than multimple unicast, right?
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Thanks, Tom. Is there a way to bypass the input of user/pass and session? I’m afraid you will say no.
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that depends on your network and server hardware and network configuration. personally i image multiple computers at a time with speeds of over 5GB/minute. doing multiple unicasts can be very disk I/O intensive and that slows things down, but on the other hand, multicast slows everything down with any issue with any host. i can foresee situations were a server with an SSD could be faster then multicast
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[quote=“guscrown, post: 38997, member: 26595”]Thanks, Tom. Is there a way to bypass the input of user/pass and session? I’m afraid you will say no.[/quote]
I’m afraid you’re stuck being afraid for now?
I’m not trying to sound rude or crude, but some of these things are set in such a manner for some semblance of security. You could play with the source code to have it work for you.
First you’d needed to edit the FOGConfigurationPage ‘disabled’ part on pxe setting function. You’d make line 278 of the file /var/www/fog/lib/pages/FOGConfigurationPage.class.php from:
[php]‘disabled’ => $menuid ? ‘readonly=“true”’ : ‘’,[/php]
TO:
[php]‘disaabled’ => ‘’,[/php]Then you’d edit BootMenu.class.php to move the $_REQUEST[‘sessionJoin’] settings on lines: 572 and 573 to right under line 159.
Then you edit on the GUI side (fog.multijoin) and remove the lines stating:
[code]login[/code]
[code]param username ${username}[/code]
[code]param password ${password}[/code]That should remove authentication from the mix. That said, I’d highly recommend against it.
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Thanks, Tom. I really appreciate your help.
I saw that there is a way to bypass registration and deploy with multicast on 0.32, I will try and install that one.
I am also thinking of asking the PC manufacturer for a list of all the mac addresses for the 350 pieces that I bought, there might be a chance that they have a way to send them to me. I could preload them onto the DB.
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What specifically are you going to install from 0.32?
That was a complete patch of the bypass registration file.
While the file might load, you’ll only kernel panic, and even if you boot into it, it won’t know anything about how the new system is setup.
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Sorry, what I meant was install 0.32 from scratch on another VM and try it out.
I will first try your mod for removing the authentication for joining the multicast. I can do this in a copy of the VM, and simply use it during this period. After that I can go back to the more secure option.
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[quote=“Tom Elliott, post: 38994, member: 7271”]as you know what image is what.
Try latest svn.
I’ve made functionality of multicast joining. Not with capone, as that’s to hard to guess.
What you do:
[From GUI]
Go to image management page.Choose multicast image
Setup your needed parameters on the page presented.
Submit the form.
[From Client]
Boot unregistered system to boot menu.
Choose Join Multicast session option.
Type in your fog gui login and password.
Type in the name you set the session to in gui.
You should be good.[/quote]
Tom,
I tried to do this, but Join Multicast Session was not appearing on unregistered hosts. I went into fog.multijoin option in PXE Menu Configuration and selected “All Hosts”. This basically broke it, as I don’t see it on any host anymore. And fog.multijoin option from PXE Menu Configuration is gone now.
I’m on 2637, by the way.
