WDS and FOG
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Some progress. I got interrupted. Got UEFI and BIOS systems booting from WDS without specifying a boot file. Tomorrow I’ll be working on another hunch to hijack that to chain load to fog.
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This is great for WDS mixed with FOG…
But it does not help those that don’t have Windows Servers at their disposal.
I’m still super interested in this, but I think I still have to pursue the DHCP policies thing. I’m just holding off till I can actually get a UEFI system to frekkin boot with FOG.
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Well hopefully I will be getting that far today with my system. And yes, if you are not using Windows servers, then you need to use a Linux DHCP and do their version of handling of Option 93. I’ll admit I am not bothering to research that method at all, because we will not be using it.
EDIT: Making progress. Nearly have WDS passing to FOG for BIOS machines, but I’m getting an error that vanishes quite quickly. Hunting that down. Also trying hard to keep all of my references that I’m using straight. I have about 20 tabs open, and files across three monitors right now.
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Ran into technical roadblocks. Probably going to ditch Syslinux. Now looking for a way to get WDS to point straight to a boot file on another server. Hints welcomed.
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I don’t know enough about it to offer advice. I couldn’t ever get WDS to work right, hence my newly found FOG excitement. The deeper I dive into the Linux pool, the more I think it was meant to be.
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I may have hit my last straw with WDS. I might be able to make it work by compiling my own rendition of iPXE, but it appears that everyone would have to compile their own if they wanted it to work with this. I am looking at another option now that will in the end still give proper arch detection and handling, and also allow those who want to use WDS to do so. But I can tell you right now that if this works out it will be a lot less hacky.
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Hope it’s open source…
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Oh, it is. I’m using dnsmasq.
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[quote=“need2, post: 46615, member: 21891”]Oh, it is. I’m using dnsmasq.[/quote]
So, then this begs the question, can dnsmasq and DHCP be used on the same FOG machine? Because this will come up.
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Fairly certain I saw config options that would allow for that. I’m pressing forward either way, and if it’s an issue I’ll try to fix it later.
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I spent some time on this over the winter, specifically trying to add a custom entry for WDS to FOG’s advanced iPXE boot menu…without any help from dnsmasq.
I remember the part that stumped me was passing Option 60 (PXEClient) with iPXE. If this is even possible and anyone knows how to do this I’d love to hear it
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It’s probably easier to use a Open-Source front end for everything… like SysLinux.
Cant change WDS’ code.
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It shouldn’t be too hard to have a method to chain to WDS. Its just a matter of triggering the right file. It does matter what version of Windows Server you are running. When I get to that part, I will be making a connection to a Windows Server 2012. The same methods should also work on 2008r2 and 2012r2.
Any/all results and documentation on my UEFI/BIOS coexistence will be going into a new thread. Since that will use DnsMasq it will be off topic for this thread.
