Deploying images from USB
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Thank you for all helpful tips, it really helps me on the way to accomplish what I need. Uncle Frank, I did what you suggested and ended up with a bootable usb stick and as you said ended up with command line. But it seems like usb controllers are removed from the kernel or the init file. Is this correct? Any suggestions how to add this again?
I will start to edit the files needed to make fog image the computer for the stick, but is it fog.download I must edit? Could someone please describe a bit what files are involved when I want to image a computer? (If someone has already made a description of how rings work and the files involved please someone tip me. I´m really interested in getting t know the system
) I guess the file that involves imaging the computer need a path to where the image is stored, so I will try to implement usb detection and mount that usb stick and make a list if all available images where the user could choose from and then send the path to fog. -
I just heard about FOG not supporting USB-storage to prevent trouble if someone left a stick in one of the clients by accident (see Junkhackers comment here: [url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/request-for-help-or-maybe-just-answers.12476/#post-42596[/url]). So you’d have to build your own kernel. Let me know if you need assistence with that. See some instructions here: [url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Building_a_Custom_Kernel[/url] or even better here: [url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Build_TomElliott_Kernel[/url]
Within the init.xz file you want to study those files:
[CODE]/bin/fog.download
/bin/fog.checkin
/usr/share/fog/lib/funcs.sh[/CODE]FOG mounts /images via NFS from the server. Change this to mount your USB-Stick. But there probably is quite some work to be done in fog.checkin too, I’d say. Forgot about that at first, sorry.
One more thing I just remembered. You probably will have to change your boot parameters sooner or later too to match things for your scenario. See how you go and let me know if I can help you.
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i really think it would be easier to create a clonezilla usb boot stick, and copy your image to it, instead of trying to rewrite the fog stuff
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[quote=“Junkhacker, post: 42613, member: 21583”]i really think it would be easier to create a clonezilla usb boot stick, and copy your image to it, instead of trying to rewrite the fog stuff[/quote]
You could be right there. Somehow I got drawn away by the idea of being able to make FOG do local restore… Maybe it’s just easier to use clonezilla. -
Could always just haul around hard drives with the right images on them already… Way faster than imaging!
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Yes I agree with you Junkhacker after the last response from Uncle Frank it seems like a bigger job than expected. Tried to search a bit around this but did not find anything about a conversion or something of images made in fog and then deployed using clonezilla. Do you know anything about this? I tried to just copy the image from fog to clonezilla, but that did not work. Clonezilla has more files in their image folder that fog has and the naming is different.
Sorry for all my questions… But I really need a working solution up and running. All the help are very much appreciated! -
I see your point Wayne. And for 99% of the time we use an image server. But sometimes we need to do an quick imaging of a computer without having a server around and then we need to have a offline method to do the imaging. Have also thought about having a virtual box setup locally on a laptop with a fog server to run in these situations.
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[quote=“Jørn Pettersen, post: 42619, member: 28650”]I see your point Wayne. And for 99% of the time we use an image server. But sometimes we need to do an quick imaging of a computer without having a server around and then we need to have a offline method to do the imaging. Have also thought about having a virtual box setup locally on a laptop with a fog server to run in these situations.[/quote]
But even then, if your production hardware is similar enough (just a few models), you could have ready-to-go hard drives in your bag/work van to install in those broke down systems.
And you could totally set up FOG on a laptop, and have it dish out DHCP and the works. You would need a cross-over cable in order to not use a switch. It’d work fine.
But, that’s an inefficient method. I’d personally just have hard drives ready to stick in, myself.
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I had installed Ubuntu and Fog on a 64GB stick and made it a bootable server for when I go to remote sites. I use a computer to boot the USB stick(makes a temporary server) and the rest get rebooted so that they can get their info from the fog server it works ok but really need a USB3.0 stick 2.0 takes about 3 times longer than normal.
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to use clonezilla with fog images, you will need to set up the partitions manually, such as by using gparted. then use the command line to write the image to the partition. this is more or less what you’ll need to tell it
[CODE]gunzip -d -c < $file | partclone.restore --ignore_crc -O $disk -N -f[/CODE][quote=“Jørn Pettersen, post: 42619, member: 28650”]Have also thought about having a virtual box setup locally on a laptop with a fog server to run in these situations.[/quote]
people have done this as well, and it works -
Probably you could also capture one image using clonezilla from that particular kind of client just to have a template of clonezilla files ready. Then swap ‘sdaX.<fstype>-ptcl-img.gz.aa’ files with those you got from fog. From what I could find out they should be in the correct format (partclone packed with gzip) already. You just need to rename them properly. Give it a try…
