Hostname changer woes and questions

[pacsr]

We are in the middle of moving away from Altiris and have been trying to see if FOG fits the bill. Because of the environment we are in we do not have access to the network’s DHCP server. We figured we would try FOG in an isolated network before trying to get it working else where.

We are running Debian Jessie with FOG 1.2.0 setup according to this wiki page. PXE booting, image uploading and downloading all work fine, but FOG doesn’t seem to change the hostname once the image download is complete even though the FOG client service is installed on the image (Windows 10 based).

So a couple questions:

• Does FOG need to be able to resolve the hostnames in order to instruct the client to change the hostname?
• Is it possible to change the hostname without using the client service?
• Is the hostname changer dependent on active directory joining being successful?

I think we’ve just missed something obvious. I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

[george1421]

First let me say, I ran a rather large Altiris environment (til 6.9 era) for several years so I know where you are coming from. Contrats on the move.

Some recommendations I would personally deploy FOG on either ubuntu 14.04 or Centos 7. Other distros work, its just those two work marginally better. Of those two my personal preference is Centos which is similar to Red Hat.

For Win10 you will probably want to be on the 1.2.0 trunk build instead of 1.2.0 stable. Its a bit confusing for newcomers but the 1.2.0 stable build is about 2 years old now and doesn’t support Win10, gpt disks, and uefi firmware very well. Will 1.2.0 stable work, yes. Does 1.2.0 trunk work better, yes. Just understand that the trunk build is a development trunk build with frequent updates and sometimes bugs. I can say I’ve been using the trunk build in a production environment for 17 months now with great success.

Now to your questions.

I can’t remember the 1.2.0 stable setup exactly, but in the trunk build there is a early host name changer that will change the system name without the client installed. If not, there is still an option in that in my setup I don’t use the fog client or early host name change at all. I have a post install script that mounts the windows drive and updates the unattend.xml file. So there are a few different options for you.

To answer your last question, no the client doesn’t need to be connected to AD for the host name changer to work. The fog client service runs as the SYSTEM user so it can change the password at any time.

Its highly possible that the version of the fog client that is shipped with doesn’t directly support win10 (consider that the fog client for 1.2.0 stable is 2 years old).

[george1421]

The FOG Client is needed to support application installation (called Snapins in FOG terminology). There are other differences between FOG and Altiris such as inventory software/hardware support (FOG lacks). But with the trunk version of FOG it is getting closer to an Altiris like setup.

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 said in Hostname changer woes and questions:

Its highly possible that the version of the fog client that is shipped with doesn’t directly support win10

To my knowledge, the legacy client does not work on win10.

As George already said, I’d recommend just running the trunk version.

You need the server to have Internet access to install. Set it up to serve DHCP. once all that is complete, you can then move it to an isolated network. But each time you need to update, you will need Internet access at least temporarily for that.

[george1421]

That reminds me of another point from above. As long as your current dhcp server is not sending out dhcp options 66 and 67 or you don’t have altiris current on that subnet, you can setup dnsmasq to supply the missing dhcp information without touching your managed dhcp server. If you do have altiris or current dhcp options 66 and 67 on your main business network then your isolated network is the best choice for this install. You can setup the FOG server to act as the dhcp and dns server for your deployment network.