Folder structure to organise images?

[Zourous]

I’ve got a lot of images now and it’s harder now to keep them organised, it would be great if I could name a few folders to organise my images better.

[Wayne Workman]

I’ve been in your boat before, I’ve had 30 and 40 images before. The key is naming them well and using the search tool.

Here’s what I came up with:

Model_Version_Month_Year

So for example, Lenovo_L530_Jan_2017 or another example, Optiplex_7010_July_2016

Using this, you now know when the image was made, and the model and version. So if you wanted to find all images for all Optplex_7010 machines, you would type “Optiplex_7010” into the search bar and the fog web interface would find them all. No need to bother with clicking through folders - just use good names and search.

Another way to name them if you have universal images might be:

Function_Month_Year

So for example:

Base_Janurary_2017 that all other images will be built from. Suppose after you have the base done, you want one that has lots of development tools on it. You’d image the base onto a box, make your changes, then capture that to a new image called Dev_Janurary_2017

Ultimately it’s all up to you, I’d advise against putting the day in the name because it’s just more to type, plus you already have captured date on the image anyways.

Whatever you choose though, keep it really simple and stick with it forever.

[Zourous]

Ok, don’t worry I can see you’re trying to lean me away from the idea. I just thought this would be a much tidier and logical layout for the images list. Searching is fine if you know what you want to type to get to the result. If you’re not sure, it would be easier to navigate through logical folders.

[Wayne Workman]

@Zourous I’m not trying to lean you away, I’m trying to show you the way. FOG 1.x doesn’t support more than one image path per storage node. Having more than one storage node just for the sake of having images nested into directories will cause more complexity and trouble than it’s worth.

Having a naming convention for your images (and sticking with it) is a best practice.

[Tom Elliott]

I don’t know what you’re looking for, specifically, but it won’t “create” folder structures for you.

That said, it’s still linux. If you know how you want the folders structured out, you can make sure to define the image path appropriately for the image you’re setting up and just make that the definition.

For example:

Your images location will be assumed, for now, to be /images/.

You would create the folders you want to “separate”, for example, a group1 and group2 folder.

You would login to your storage node(s)/server and run:
mkdir /images/group{1,2}

Make sure ownership permissions are set appropriately:
chmod 777 -R /images; chown -R fog:root /images

When you make your images in the GUI you would set the path to:

group1/someothername or group2/someothername

[Zourous]

I think you’re taking me a bit too literally, when I say folder structure, I mean the effect of a folder structure. For example in fog you can create a group and then associate hosts with it. The hosts are relevent to that group. So in theory you can do the same with images and collect them under one relevent name, for example “windows 10”. Even if you had just one level of groups or folders, call it what you like, it would aid organisation when you’ve got 30 plus images.

[Wayne Workman]

@Tom-Elliott If the goal is organization, Moving the OS Type to it’s own column in the “List All” for images and the ability to sort it by OS might be the most simple approach.

@Zourous But at the same time, if you just put “Win10” in the name of all your Win10 images and search for “Win10” This would also give you a list of all Win10 images.

[Junkhacker]

one thing that i’ve taken to doing is putting keywords in the description of the image. when i want to see a group of related images, i search for the keyword that relates them