FORCEPXE CCTK Snapin- Is it possible?
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Hi,
I am new to FOG and the FOG Community and am excited to be working with the project.
Currently I am looking to implement an environment where my company would receive a pallet of PCs, our techs would plug them into a network and boot the PCs into PXE, the hard drives would be wiped, and then we would reboot into PXE and image the PCs. I have set up a wipe environment, and am now configuring FOG with a virtual machine to set up the imaging. My problem lies in that manually booting each computer into PXE is rather cumbersome and takes away from the automation I’m trying to implement. I set up a package with Dell’s CCTK tool to autoboot the PCs into PXE but am having some trouble figuring out how to deploy the package over the network. I am hoping that I can use FOG for this but it seems from what I have read and done so far you have to boot the computer into PXE to register the HOST in FOG before being able to deploy an image or a snapin. Can someone provide me with some more information on this? Is FOG the right solution for this? Thank you for your time.
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If I remember correctly, I think Dell allows you to choose your CMOS configuration, and the factory will set it as you like for bulk orders.
You could just have them all come with network boot as 1st boot device, and PXE booting enabled…
You could make the “Quick Register” the default… which would be overridden if there was a task waiting. In the Web GUI, go to FOG Configuration, then iPXE New Menu Entry. You can make an entry there for quick register, and set it as the default item, and choose to have this menu only show for un-registered clients.
Why isn’t your Dell distributor imaging your bulk orders for you?? Ours did it for us…
Just my ideas. Others might have better ones.
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[quote=“Wayne Workman, post: 43214, member: 28155”]If I remember correctly, I think Dell allows you to choose your CMOS configuration, and the factory will set it as you like for bulk orders.
You could just have them all come with network boot as 1st boot device, and PXE booting enabled…
You could make the “Quick Register” the default… which would be overridden if there was a task waiting. In the Web GUI, go to FOG Configuration, then iPXE New Menu Entry. You can make an entry there for quick register, and set it as the default item, and choose to have this menu only show for un-registered clients.
Why isn’t your Dell distributor imaging your bulk orders for you?? Ours did it for us…
Just my ideas. Others might have better ones.[/quote]
I apologize let me clarify. We receive these computers off lease from schools and other contracts. So these are used PCs that we wipe the hard drives of sensitive data, audit, and refurbish resell. So if the net admins that possessed the PCs before us didn’t enable PXE boot we have to manually enable it on all of them.
What I just thought about is pulling all the mac addresses using arp after the computers have been turned on, importing the clients manually, loading the CCTK package as a snapin, and then they should restart into PXE. Would this work?
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what i do is boot to either a USB or pxe winpe environment where i run the cctk. it’s not fully automated, but it’s close enough for me
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[quote=“Junkhacker, post: 43225, member: 21583”]what i do is boot to either a USB or pxe winpe environment where i run the cctk. it’s not fully automated, but it’s close enough for me[/quote]
Thank you for your response. If I am running a PXE server already would this not be the same as just turning on each PC and selecting PXE boot?
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It’s tough to automate because you’ve probably got all these different models coming in, probably flaky hardware, flaky HDDs, and all sorts of CMOS settings…
It’s understandable from a business perspective why you’d want to streamline & automate this but, I don’t see how all user interaction could be totally avoided.
How do you do it in you’re wipe environment? Boot-n-Nuke disk, flash drive? Is that network based?
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I also looked into the Capone plugin for you… right here: [url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Capone[/url]
But, Capone is actually depreciated in the current SVN, and it’s recommended that newer versions use what I described earlier. Here’s the text from that:
“[FONT=sans-serif][COLOR=#000000]As of FOG v1.3.0-r2651 the fog user can now add Quick Image to the Fog iPXE Menu(For All Hosts) and then select the exact image desired without having to do any registration. BUT intervention is still required to start imaging.”[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=sans-serif][COLOR=#000000]But, if you’re using an earlier version, Capone might be for you.[/COLOR][/FONT]
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[quote=“Wayne Workman, post: 43229, member: 28155”]It’s tough to automate because you’ve probably got all these different models coming in, probably flaky hardware, flaky HDDs, and all sorts of CMOS settings…
It’s understandable from a business perspective why you’d want to streamline & automate this but, I don’t see how all user interaction could be totally avoided.
How do you do it in you’re wipe environment? Boot-n-Nuke disk, flash drive? Is that network based?[/quote]
In the wipe environment I set up a PXE boot server that pushes out a Boot-N-Nuke iso. I will be adding that to the FOG PXE Menu. And you are correct in that all user interaction cannot be avoided, I completely agree. I’m just trying to see if I can avoid having to manually boot hundreds of PCs into PXE. But there may not be a way.
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[quote=“Wayne Workman, post: 43230, member: 28155”]I also looked into the Capone plugin for you… right here: [url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Capone[/url]
But, Capone is actually depreciated in the current SVN, and it’s recommended that newer versions use what I described earlier. Here’s the text from that:
“[FONT=sans-serif][COLOR=#000000]As of FOG v1.3.0-r2651 the fog user can now add Quick Image to the Fog iPXE Menu(For All Hosts) and then select the exact image desired without having to do any registration. BUT intervention is still required to start imaging.”[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=sans-serif][COLOR=#000000]But, if you’re using an earlier version, Capone might be for you.[/COLOR][/FONT][/quote]
This is very interesting. I will look into this and maybe consider loading an earlier version of FOG. Though so far it looks like exporting an arp table off the subnet into excel, and importing that into FOG, and then pushing out a CCTK snapin might be the best solution for what I’m looking for. Thank you for your help
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[quote=“Reagan Kirby, post: 43227, member: 28838”]Thank you for your response. If I am running a PXE server already would this not be the same as just turning on each PC and selecting PXE boot?[/quote]
the difference is, usually usb boot is enabled as an option even when pxe boot is not, so you often don’t need to enter bios. the cctk also sets more than just the pxe for me, so it’s less keystrokes in the bios.
