Debian 8, Fog trunk, PXELinux on MS Server and MS DHCP help

[FlowLive]

@george1421 So I was able to get something with this code, took the steps first as per
http://ipxe.org/appnote/chainload_wds to add different
boot/*
boot*
/boot/*
\boot*
/boot*
parameters in the WDS server’s registry…

I now get this;

Downloaded WDSNBP...

Architecture: x64
WDSNBP started using DHCP Referral.
Contacting Server: x.x.x.x (Gateway: 0.0.0.0)..
No response from Windows Deployment Services server.
Launching pxeboot.com...
TFTP download failed

Getting close! Any idea? I did restart WDS service after changing the registry, as per http://ipxe.org/appnote/chainload_wds
The contact server ip is valid but I wonder about the gateway being all 0.0.0.0

[george1421]

@FlowLive

Looking and the chain load link that you sent. I did see this reference

  set netX/next-server ip.of.wds.server
  imgexec tftp://${netX/next-server}/boot/x86/wdsnbp.com

What I think I might have missed is in my guess is setting the network adapter 0:

set wdsserver:ipv4 192.168.1.88
set net0/next-server ${wdsserver}

Its interesting that the chain does work (kind of) that it does gram the wdsnnp.com file, but there is something in the referral that its missing to continue.

[FlowLive]

@george1421 Well with this one you just sent I still get a blinking cursor (I added /boot/x86/wdsnbp.com)

This is what worked:

set wdsserver:ipv4 <ip_addr_wds_server>
set next-server ${wdsserver}
chain tftp://${wdsserver}/Boot\x86\wdsnbp.com

Funny thing is just changing to forward slashes after Boot and x86 brings back the blinking cursor… thought the changes to the registry was especially for that…

Anyhow, now I tried;

set wdsserver:ipv4 x.x.x.x
set net0/next-server ${wdsserver}
chain tftp://${wdsserver}/Boot\x86\wdsnbp.com

It Works!!!

Got my PXE Menu showing, got to WDS, booted the wim file!

This is great! Thanks a bunch!

[Wayne Workman]

@FlowLive said:

@george1421 Well with this one you just sent I still get a blinking cursor (I added /boot/x86/wdsnbp.com)

This is what worked:

set wdsserver:ipv4 <ip_addr_wds_server>
set next-server ${wdsserver}
chain tftp://${wdsserver}/Boot\x86\wdsnbp.com

Funny thing is just changing to forward slashes after Boot and x86 brings back the blinking cursor… thought the changes to the registry was especially for that…

Anyhow, now I tried;

set wdsserver:ipv4 x.x.x.x
set net0/next-server ${wdsserver}
chain tftp://${wdsserver}/Boot\x86\wdsnbp.com

It Works!!!

Got my PXE Menu showing, got to WDS, booted the wim file!

This is great! Thanks a bunch!

#wiki hash tagging this for addition to the WiKi.

[FlowLive]

I wonder if ip helper on the switches should be changed, I was informed it had been added before, you guys know?
I guess if it works I shouldnt change more but if there’s a potential problem with this let me know!

Funny thing now as well is booting to hard drive works, before it was booting memtest instead…

Now I read that it’s not possible to change the menu order of things, WDS being all the way down, can’t I just bump it up a little?

[Wayne Workman]

@FlowLive said:

Now I read that it’s not possible to change the menu order of things, WDS being all the way down, can’t I just bump it up a little?

I just tried and succeeded. Here were my steps:

MariaDB [fog]> select pxeID, pxeName from pxeMenu;
+-------+-------------------+
| pxeID | pxeName           |
+-------+-------------------+
|     1 | fog.local         |
|     2 | fog.memtest       |
|     3 | fog.reginput      |
|     4 | fog.keyreg        |
|     5 | fog.reg           |
|     6 | fog.quickimage    |
|     7 | fog.multijoin     |
|     8 | fog.quickdel      |
|     9 | fog.sysinfo       |
|    10 | fog.debug         |
|    11 | fog.advanced      |
|    12 | fog.advancedlogin |
|    13 | fog.approvehost   |
|    14 | win7              |
|    15 | DBAN              |
|    16 | DBAN-Zero         |
+-------+-------------------+
16 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [fog]> update pxeMenu set pxeID=17 where pxeID=2;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0

MariaDB [fog]> select pxeID, pxeName from pxeMenu;
+-------+-------------------+
| pxeID | pxeName           |
+-------+-------------------+
|     1 | fog.local         |
|    17 | fog.memtest       |
|     3 | fog.reginput      |
|     4 | fog.keyreg        |
|     5 | fog.reg           |
|     6 | fog.quickimage    |
|     7 | fog.multijoin     |
|     8 | fog.quickdel      |
|     9 | fog.sysinfo       |
|    10 | fog.debug         |
|    11 | fog.advanced      |
|    12 | fog.advancedlogin |
|    13 | fog.approvehost   |
|    14 | win7              |
|    15 | DBAN              |
|    16 | DBAN-Zero         |
+-------+-------------------+
16 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [fog]> update pxeMenu set pxeID=2 where pxeID=16;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0

MariaDB [fog]> select pxeID, pxeName from pxeMenu;
+-------+-------------------+
| pxeID | pxeName           |
+-------+-------------------+
|     1 | fog.local         |
|    17 | fog.memtest       |
|     3 | fog.reginput      |
|     4 | fog.keyreg        |
|     5 | fog.reg           |
|     6 | fog.quickimage    |
|     7 | fog.multijoin     |
|     8 | fog.quickdel      |
|     9 | fog.sysinfo       |
|    10 | fog.debug         |
|    11 | fog.advanced      |
|    12 | fog.advancedlogin |
|    13 | fog.approvehost   |
|    14 | win7              |
|    15 | DBAN              |
|     2 | DBAN-Zero         |
+-------+-------------------+
16 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [fog]> update pxeMenu set pxeID=16 where pxeID=17;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0

MariaDB [fog]> select pxeID, pxeName from pxeMenu;
+-------+-------------------+
| pxeID | pxeName           |
+-------+-------------------+
|     1 | fog.local         |
|    16 | fog.memtest       |
|     3 | fog.reginput      |
|     4 | fog.keyreg        |
|     5 | fog.reg           |
|     6 | fog.quickimage    |
|     7 | fog.multijoin     |
|     8 | fog.quickdel      |
|     9 | fog.sysinfo       |
|    10 | fog.debug         |
|    11 | fog.advanced      |
|    12 | fog.advancedlogin |
|    13 | fog.approvehost   |
|    14 | win7              |
|    15 | DBAN              |
|     2 | DBAN-Zero         |
+-------+-------------------+
16 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [fog]>

[FlowLive]

@Wayne-Workman Nice, how do you get to MariaDB? Are those change sticking through trunk updates?

[FlowLive]

@Wayne-Workman
Is it normal that the latest commit I see in sourceforge is r4393?

Nervermind, I just realized how it’s setup…

[Wayne Workman]

@FlowLive said:

@Wayne-Workman Nice, how do you get to MariaDB? Are those change sticking through trunk updates?

The settings should stick.

mysql
use fog

@FlowLive said:

Is it normal that the latest commit I see in sourceforge is r4393?

Yep.

[george1421]

@FlowLive said:

Now I read that it’s not possible to change the menu order of things, WDS being all the way down, can’t I just bump it up a little?

Where it should be, way at the bottom. Where do you think the competition would put it, front and center??

I’m glad/happy you got that wds thing fixed out. From what I’ve read those forward / backslashes are a PITA to get worked out. It looks like you got the right combination to get it done.

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 said:

@FlowLive said:

Now I read that it’s not possible to change the menu order of things, WDS being all the way down, can’t I just bump it up a little?

Where it should be, way at the bottom. Where do you think the competition would put it, front and center??

I have the urge to delete my post but the inner-tech in me says not to… lol

[george1421]

I’m going to guess that its not possible to change the display order. There is no concept of display order in the database so I assume the display order is being set based on the record ID where boot from the hard drive is record ID 1. I would not recommend messing with any record ID to alter the display order.

You will receive much bad karma if you do go ahead with this plan.

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 Yeah you’re right. The DB changes below do alter the order in which the items are showed, but it doens’t change what’s done.

It appears that the fog default items are hard-coded somehow.

[Tom Elliott]

@Wayne-Workman Magic.

[need2]

I’m late to the party, but no I never got WDS and FOG to play well together. I wasn’t just trying to get them to coexist on the same network though, I was pressing their faces so hard together that they’d forget if they were kissing or not. My goal was to work around the now solved issue of using a Windows DHCP environment to handle Legacy and UEFI PXE coexistence, which WDS can inherently handle.

[george1421]

@need2 said:

I’m late to the party, but no I never got WDS and FOG to play well together.

@FlowLive was just able to do this. Its a bit down in the thread, but he has FOG acting as the PXE boot server then you can select the WDS environment from the FOG Menu.

I went the other way around and setup FOG to be able to boot the MDT litetouch image so that you can deploy through MDT from the FOG boot menu. Two different ways to have FOG and MDT/WDS coexist.

[need2]

Saw that. Good work. The only reason I wanted WDS and FOG to work together was to leverage WDS’s handling of UEFI/BIOS identification. But the DHCP method is much more elegant and less resource intensive.

I am glad that you got that working though. Options are valuable when doing IT work.

[jukka2015]

@george1421

I only want one list of options, is there a way to build a list with FOG management GUI and copy it to: BootMenu.class.php file directly? Or any other suggestion…
Where is located that Advanced boot menu settings? I just want simple list with couple of options, like: “Boot from local drive”, “Diagnostic” (that’s .ISO image) and make a “Quick inventory”…

[george1421]

@jukka2015

Not sure I totally understand what your goal is.

But for the easy part first. You have to be running the SVN trunk build (pre 1.3.0) not the 1.2.0 base. Under the fog settings there is the ipxe boot menu. You must add a new entry then you can set the options to display the new menu item depending on the state of the target computer (new, undefined, all, etc [stating from my memory]). You can add in the iso image as I outlined below. Also @Wayne-Workman just updated a wiki about adding items to the ipxe menu.

Now about the part I’m not sure about. Do I understand that you want to remove most of the standard FOG menu items except for a select few? If that is the case you will need to edit the mysql database. Before I go into that, lets make sure that is what you want to do. (personally I don’t recommend this approach [tweaking the database] because there is no way to know how it will impact FOGs execution, stated as a non developer). Wayne kind of laid out what needs to be done to the database about midway down in this thread.

[jukka2015]

@george1421

Do I understand that you want to remove most of the standard FOG menu items except for a select few?

That’s exactly what I want… My use of FOG is just as that minimal and I don’t want users to get confused. … I want to run my .ISO file directly from the first menu, I was succesfully start it from the Advanced menu for now, but I don’t know how to link it to first list below default choice .