Hostname Change on 700+ Workstations

[anthony.delarosa]

Server

• FOG Version: 1.3.4
• OS: CentOS 6.7

Client

• Service Version:
• OS:

Description

Hello,

We have a bit of a big project and that is that we are re-naming all workstations (previously imaged with FOG of course) to fit a better naming convention. Rather than doing this one by one as of course FOG can do with the FOG Hostname Changer, anything that FOG can do so that we can schedule this hostname change on 700+ workstations? Basically at the moment all PCs are named:

vanprodz440-001, 002, 003 etc…

We’d like to change that to van-wsz440a-001

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks FOG!

[Joe Schmitt]

@anthony-delarosa in my opinion your best approach would be to have a script setup or something that changes the hostnames in the SQL database. For example if you wanted to slowly roll out the changes, the script could do 50 at a time, or it could wait until sunday night and then do all of them at once. Once changed in the DB, the fog client would receive the new hostname and apply the change almost instantly.

[Wayne Workman]

You can script this as joe said,

But I think it would be easier to do a host export, modify the export, and then re-inport.

[Avaryan]

@Wayne-Workman said in Hostname Change on 700+ Workstations:

You can script this as joe said,

But I think it would be easier to do a host export, modify the export, and then re-inport.

This is what I would do; however, it might be a good idea to disable the hostname changer module first. This will prevent FOG from immediately changing everything. At the end of the workday, or whenever, you can reenable the module and let FOG do its thing.

[anthony.delarosa]

@Wayne-Workman thank you! I think the easiest is the host export and import! i will test with that and see how it goes. Thank you everyone!

[anthony.delarosa]

Update:

I tried exporting and importing and upon importing i get Total Rows, Hosts with a 0

Am I doing something wrong? file is the same

[anthony.delarosa]

so used a different version of Excel and now I get this error:

Not sure what tit means by Row #0: 'cause the Excel file starts at Row 1

[Tom Elliott]

@anthony.delarosa Did you remove all the hosts first?

[anthony.delarosa]

@Tom-Elliott hey Tom, remove them? sorry I wasn’t aware of this, I need to go in there and delete all the hosts and then import it again? All I did was export, modify and import the hosts and I keep getting this Row#0 error

[Tom Elliott]

Right.

You’re exporting to chagne the names.

Then you remove all the hosts are you changing. Reimport.

Essentially what you’re importing is failing because it already exists.

[anthony.delarosa]

@Tom-Elliott ah ok, so i export, make the changes to the 10x (example) hosts, remove all the other ones and re-import that file with 10x hosts? k let me try

[Tom Elliott]

@anthony.delarosa Only remove the hosts you need to change from FOG.

[anthony.delarosa]

@Tom-Elliott hey Tom, thanks for that! it worked but after the import the PC (test PC) won’t change it’s hostname automatically. I mean FOG shows the new given name: van-wsz440-147 but the computer Windows 8.1 still has the old name vanprodz440-147 and it’s not rebooting automatically.

FOG log file shows:

---

--------------------------------Authentication--------------------------------

2017-04-20 2:30 PM Client-Info Version: 0.11.9
2017-04-20 2:30 PM Client-Info OS: Windows
2017-04-20 2:30 PM Middleware::Authentication Waiting for authentication timeout to pass
2017-04-20 2:32 PM Middleware::Communication Download: http://192.168.170.128/fog/management/other/ssl/srvpublic.crt
2017-04-20 2:32 PM Data::RSA FOG Server CA cert found
2017-04-20 2:32 PM Middleware::Authentication Cert OK
2017-04-20 2:32 PM Middleware::Communication POST URL: http://192.168.170.128/fog/management/index.php?sub=requestClientInfo&authorize&newService
2017-04-20 2:32 PM Middleware::Response Invalid security token

[anthony.delarosa]

this is what the Hostname Changer shows:

---

--------------------------------HostnameChanger-------------------------------

2017-04-20 2:41 PM Client-Info Client Version: 0.11.9
2017-04-20 2:41 PM Client-Info Client OS: Windows
2017-04-20 2:41 PM Client-Info Server Version: 1.3.4
2017-04-20 2:41 PM Middleware::Response ERROR: Unable to get subsection
2017-04-20 2:41 PM Middleware::Response ERROR: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

[Tom Elliott]

@anthony.delarosa said in Hostname Change on 700+ Workstations:

2017-04-20 2:32 PM Middleware::Response Invalid security token

2017-04-20 2:32 PM Middleware::Response Invalid security token

Please go to the hosts you reimported to edit, and click the “Reset encryption data” button for them.

[anthony.delarosa]

@Tom-Elliott that’s why you’re the creator and i’m just some guy breaking stuff lol ^_^ thanks Tom! with this I’ll be able to complete it by assigning them to a group

[anthony.delarosa]

@Tom-Elliott by the way, any snap-in that would detect what OU the computer is in and be able to put it back into that same OU after import? it’s a lot to ask but why not lol

[Tom Elliott]

@anthony.delarosa I’m sure it could be done, but I don’t think anyone has set one up yet.

That said, you can use the FOG Client to join a host to a domain, including the OU.

[george1421]

@anthony.delarosa said in Hostname Change on 700+ Workstations:

@Tom-Elliott by the way, any snap-in that would detect what OU the computer is in and be able to put it back into that same OU after import?

We will have to ask @Joe-Schmitt for confirmation, but a system rename shouldn’t remove the host from AD to rename it. It should just rename it and leave it where the system was in AD/OU. I can understand (re)connecting the target computer to AD may change its OU.

You could also do this with a VBScript or powershell script to rename the system. I’ve done this before with vbscript.

[Joe Schmitt]

@george1421 the problem is likely that he is deleting hosts and then importing them (I’m not sure if a CSV export stores this information). This is why I advised directly modifying the SQL database.