New image wont upload
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@george1421 said:
I guess the first question is why are you using version 0.30? That is a really old version of FOG. Is this a new install?
That is what was here when I got here. We are a small charter school without much of a budget. I have to work with what I have.
I have done everything you said and it won’t even begin to pxe boot. It just goes into the BIOS and gives me a bunch of options that don’t yield results.
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@nshaw Please understand I’m not condemning here only stating that the newer version(s) (also free) has more features and are easier to support. The 0.30 build is old and some of the components can not be fixed if there is a discovered but.
Just so I can establish a baseline for the discussion.
Is this a new install / never been used / or are you new to FOG?
Have you ever pxe booted into the FOG menu before? (this will tell me if the infrastructure is setup to support pxe booting). -
@george1421 said:
@nshaw Please understand I’m not condemning here only stating that the newer version(s) (also free) has more features and are easier to support. The 0.30 build is old and some of the components can not be fixed if there is a discovered but.
Just so I can establish a baseline for the discussion.
Is this a new install / never been used / or are you new to FOG?
Have you ever pxe booted into the FOG menu before? (this will tell me if the infrastructure is setup to support pxe booting).I didn’t take it as criticism, just explaining the use of the old system. No worries.
This is a new install on 10 new computers. I have only used FOG to re-image existing computers with existing images. I have pxe booted when I re-imaged using established images. This is a silly question but do I need to download something from FOG onto the computers I want to image before I run them? On all of the walkthroughs I read, it never mentioned installing anything from FOG onto the computers being imaged. I only registered the image/host on the FOG controller.
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@nshaw The easy answer first. No nothing needs to be downloaded from fog to upload.
OK thats good then you’ve used FOG to download images before and I assume that still works. That tells me you have pxe booting setup and you have the correct settings to get into the fog pxe boot menu.
On these 10 new devices, can you get to the pxe boot menu at all? If not how far are you getting?
Just for the sake of discussion, what make and model are these computers?
Since you are running 0.30, have you reset the bios (on these 10 new computers) to ensure you are in bios mode and not secure boot/uefi? (for reference any fog version before 1.2.0 doesn’t support uefi mode at all. And support for uefi in 1.2.0 is hit or miss. The trunk version does a lot better with uefi support).
Did you manually register the new computers with FOG or did you use the pxe menu to register the device with fog (if manual then we need to check the mac address to ensure that there wasn’t a miss-key) -
They are Dell Optiplex 760 with Windows 7. They are refurbished.
So, when I did sysprep and shutdown, I then restarted and hit f12 to get into the BIOS. Once there, I only get 5 options, Onboard SATA hard-drive, Onboard or USB CD-ROM drive, system setup, diagnostics and intol
management engine BIOS Extension.I think there is a great problem now however. When I first turned the computer on I didn’t realize I needed to pxe boot (the walkthrough I found didn’t say to pxe boot), so it started normally and ran some sort of sysprep stuff and told me it had failed. I shut down and tried with pxe. Now I get nothing. It tells me windows install didn’t work and to try again.
UGH.
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@nshaw Ok the model number answers a few questions then. That system is old and doesn’t know anything about uefi, that came in starting at 790.
For the 760, you need to go into the bios and look for the nic settings. You need to turn on pxe support on that nic. (I have not personally done this with the 760 but it should be there, I have with the 780s and it is there. The options on the 780 for the nic are off, on, on with pxe).
In regards to the failed boot, yeah that reference image is botched and you will need to recreate it. Because you need to capture the image in the sysprep mode not after OOB runs (and is broken now). You can test upload on the broken image (I would do this until you are sure you can get these systems to upload at least once). Then recreate your reference image and then sysprep and capture that. Thinking about your broken image. Your system should have ran to completion and created a fully functional system. IN theory you should be able to create your reference image, sysprep, shutdown, reboot and then OOBE will run to redeploy the sysprep’d image. You should end up with a functional image even through it is on the same hardware and FOG wasn’t involved. Since you have a broken image, I’m wondering even if FOG worked you would still have problems.
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It was totally that. The pxe wasn’t on. Dang, I feel like a putz. I was able to image it with an old image from one of our other Windows 7 images. It isn’t perfect but the computer is at least usable so that I can use a different one to create the new image.
Can you explain the sys prep directions? I don’t think I’m 100% clear on that process. Do you simply run sysprep / OOBE /generalize / shut down? Once it shuts down upload in FOG and pxe boot on reboot?
Do I need to sysprep all of the machines before Image them, or just the one that I pull the image from? Or do I just need to ensure that I have they are set to pxe boot?
Thank you for all of the help and support.
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@nshaw said:
Can you explain the sys prep directions? I don’t think I’m 100% clear on that process. Do you simply run sysprep / OOBE /generalize / shut down? Once it shuts down upload in FOG and pxe boot on reboot?
That is the general idea. You take and build a single reference image that has all of the drivers and software you want in that build you do this in audit mode. Make any configuration changes you need to windows and the application then run sysprep. That older version may require a FOG utility called fogprep (which does some cleanup work then calls sysprep). That fogprep/sysprep will prepare the system for cloning and then power off. At this point if you powered it back on and let windows boot it will run the OOBE and reinstall windows on that reference computer (not what you want here). Once you run fogprep and it shuts down, you will create an upload task in FOG then pxe boot that reference computer to capture the contents of the reference computer’s hard drive. Once you have that captured image you can deploy it to the next target computer (I would leave the reference computer powered off at this time just in case you need to capture the image again). From there you can deploy to the remaining computers in your lot.
I do have to say from a licensing standpoint you need to ensure you are using a VLK key since the Windows OEM licenses do not come with imaging rights. There is nothing technically stopping you from cloning a OEM license, but you will have difficulty activating them.
Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!
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@george1421 said:
There is nothing technically stopping you from cloning a OEM license, but you will have difficulty activating them.
Another good reason to move to FOG Trunk. You can key in each computer’s product key, and the new FOG Client will activate each computer with it’s own key.
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Thank you for all of the assistance. I really appreciate it. I have all of the keys for all of the Windows install’s so typing them in shouldn’t be an issue.
Thanks again!
