Storing FOG Images on Separate Network Drive

[Data31337]

@ITSolutions

Its currently mounted through the /images/external folder, but when I tried testing it out, it was mounted directly to the /images folder. The issue was that when I tried running

blkid

command it wouldn’t return a UUID for the external drive I was trying to use. What I’m going to do is probably try remounting the external drive locally as opposed to being on the network and then give the method another try. I think I understand the concept of what were trying to do, but it won’t do it with a network mounted drive (Because it won’t return a UUID while being connected to a separate server, unless there is another way of obtaining the UUID). Also too, I’m not sure if this would take care of the permissions problem that comes with the solution as well.

[ITSolutions]

@Data31337 My instructions are for a USB or Firewire style drive.

You could instead just mount it the same way you currently do, just directly to /images instead. make sure you copy all files from the current /images including hidden files.

[Data31337]

@ITSolutions

Yup that is my current method so far, but if I were to do that, then my images would easily run past 40 GBs. Which is why I copy it to the mounted drive, then hop over with File Explorer and Cut/Paste it into a “Archived Folder” I have linked. Essentially the same thing just a bit more confusing than just being able write to the mounted drive. When I replace the drive locally, I’ll report back with the results and maybe we can figure something out thats not as step-intensive.

If you want a complete list of steps that I do, it goes:
Instructions dependant on cifs-utils package

1. Login to the Ubuntu
2. Navigate to the /images folder (cd <folder path>)
3. Delete any old images being used (rm –r <dirname>)
4. Pull Needed image from Archive Directory from the external drive (Copy + Paste to NetworkImages)
5. Navigate to the NetworkImages Directory
6. Copy the image you want to use (cp –r <dirname>)
7. Set the permissions for everyone to read/write/execute (chmod 777 <dirname)
8. Review the folder contents using ls –l and make sure its highlighted green
9. Set task in FOG using correct image
10. Profit

I know this seems like a lot of work, but it really isn’t. Still takes less time than manually running to each PC and plugging my USB in and entering needed commands. With this, can run 10 PCs to a switch and image them all at the same time, which is exactly what we need because we build 10 - 15 PCs every quarter and in the start, there wasn’t ANY imaging solution. I had to build each OS by hand.