@forte647 said:

Deleting those lines causes my Multicast Join entry to not work (like I can select it but it just knocks me back to the first menu). Is there a way to hard code the user and pass into the param of multijoin? If so, what would that look like? Like if I wanted to hardcode username “fog” and password “password”.

Sorry for the double post, but I got ballsy and tried it myself and this worked for me. My multijoin params are:

params
param mac0 ${net0/mac}
param arch ${arch}
param username fog
param password password
param sessionJoin 1
isset ${net1/mac} && param mac1 ${net1/mac} || goto bootme
isset ${net2/mac} && param mac2 ${net2/mac} || goto bootme

got rid of the first login line (I guess that’s the login prompt) and then changed the user/pass lines from ${username} to a username I wanted (default account fog) and its ${password} “password”.

Changing the default entry also worked, although in my mind I really wanted to arranged differently, but that’s okay too.

Thank you, guys.

My company recently switched to Probook 455 G3s, and I had the same issue after the switch. Something about the NIC in these laptops isn’t playing nice with undionly.pxe? I switched my boot file to ipxe.pxe and it worked. So maybe try using ipxe.pxe and see what happens.

@Wayne-Workman said:

If you liked that, FOG Trunk will blow your socks off.

As far as I know, imaging unregistered computers using FOG Trunk only works with Unicast.

You can set (in storage management) how many active tasks are allowed. I keep mine set at 2. Then you network boot all machines. 2 will start. The rest wait in line and automatically start.

Thanks for the suggestion to move to trunk, and thanks Quazz for the clarification on whether or not multicast worked. This is exactly what I wanted/needed!

For any wayward googlers:
I upgraded my install to trunk using these instructions: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Upgrade_to_trunk pretty straight forward.

After the upgrade completed, I went back to image management in the web gui, selected multicast image, started a new session for the amount of clients I wanted, netbooted each client to fog’s boot menu and selected join multicast session. it goes when the specified number of clients connect.

Wonderful. Thanks a lot, guys.

Thanks for the info. It might be an underpowered CPU on the switch. All of my cables are fresh and give around 5.8 gb/s unicast, and all of the hardware I am imaging to is fresh out of the box.

Have a good week!

Server

• FOG Version: 1.4.0 fresh install
• OS: Ubuntu 14.04.5

Client

• Service Version: not sure
• OS: Win10 image to be deployed

Description

Hello, everyone. I had a question about multicast speeds. I have 20 machines set to image via multicast on a Netgear ProSafe S3300-52x switch. When I use multicast it transfers at about 2.30 ~ 2.32 GB/s. When I deploy a single image, it transfers at about 5.80 ~ 5.90 GB/s, and starting additional unicast transfers will still go 5.30~5.40 GB/s, but will start to drop off significantly after adding 3 or 4 more clients. Multicast definitely seems like the way to go when doing 10 or more computers, but is there a way to speed up multicast? I thought theoretically I should be getting closer to unicast speeds.

My network setup is pretty basic. All the machines in play are on the same switch and the switch is set to default settings. Is there anything I could tweak on the switch to speed it up? It doesn’t do anything besides provide network to the imaging bench.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

@Wayne-Workman

All right I got. The lines:

DELETE FROM multicastSessions WHERE 1;
DELETE FROM multicastSessionsAssoc WHERE 1;

returned syntax errors “check your manual”. but truncating the two tables worked.

everything seems to work normally now. thanks, guys.

@Wayne-Workman

All right i’m at RC-7

@Wayne-Workman

Running Version 1.3.0-RC-4
SVN Revision: 5941

I ran
mysql -u root <-p password> fog
truncate table multicastSessions;
truncate table multicastSessionsAssoc;
exit;

and it’s asking for more arguments to truncate the tables. "you must specify either ‘–size’ or ‘–reference’

Hey again. I usually just name my multicast sessions “1” or “q” or whatever to go through my machines as fast as possible. But lately the old sessions have not been clearing. They don’t show up in the active task queue at the bottom of the image management page, but for example if I try to make another session called “1”, it tells me there’s already a session queued by that name, but it’s not in the list.

Any ideas on how to wipe my multicast task queue?

Thanks for the responses. Every machine is identical. Same model, processor, ram, HDD, NIC, all that. I’ve taken everything off the switch except 30 machines I plan to image + the server running FOG. I’ve verified that every port in use on the switch has a full 1000Mbps link. I just imaged the 30 on my switch at about 1.80gb/s but I’d still like to go a bit faster if you think that’s possible.

I’ve verified that Spanning Tree Protocol is enabled on all ports in RSTP mode.

1.8 gb/s is much better than 1 gb/s, but can anyone think of anything else?

My company recently switched to Probook 455 G3s, and I had the same issue after the switch. Something about the NIC in these laptops isn’t playing nice with undionly.pxe? I switched my boot file to ipxe.pxe and it worked. So maybe try using ipxe.pxe and see what happens.

Heya, guys.

During a unicast deployment deploying 1 image to 1 machine at a time, I can get speeds of about 5-6 gb/s, but when I multicast out to 7 machines, it slows down to 1 gb/s. Is this normal? I was under the impression that with multicast I could achieve speeds closer to 5 or 6 gb/s. All the machines (including the FOG server) are on a pretty new enterprise grade Netgear switch (S3300-52x ProSAFE stackable smart switch) There isn’t any packet shaping or any features like that enabled on the switch. I checked on the switch’s config page and verified that every connection is reading as a full 1000 Mbps.

Are there any other config settings I should look at, or is 1 gb/s transfer the best I’m going to get? Thanks for your time, any suggestions would be very helpful.

Perfect, thanks. I wasn’t getting an error. It just kept kicking back to the first menu. If it did throw an error, it appears and disappears too quickly for me to read it or capture it.

But thanks, man. I had some funky stuff set from before maybe.