@szeraax That is a very good idea, but we have a five digit asset tag number that needs to be part of the name.

@george1421 I’m not sure I understand about deleting the hosts, so I would delete them sometime before imaging was completed?

These systems have a feature called Host Based Mac Address so that they can have a unique address, however it requires OS support. So in FOG that would mean Kernel support I believe. I can turn on Host Based Mac Address and get a unique MAC when booted into Windows. Of course since I don’t have support in FOG it registers the dongle address, then during first boot and before rename and domain join it now has a different MAC address. This is causing the computer to (re)register itself with a generic name.

Anyway. Anybody know if Host Based Mac Address support is planned?

I also read something about imaging via System UUID, this might be promising, anyone know how that might work?

Thanks for your reply!! I think I have decided to go with option two.

I will prepare separate host import CSV’s for each group of 20 computers that have unique hostnames but the same 20 MAC addresses. Before uploading each subsequent CSV I will delete the existing hosts.

I had one extra question that you (or someone else) might be able to help me with. As long as I am deleting the previous host definitions, I shouldn’t need to clear encryption data after importing the next ones, should I? Wouldn’t they just be treated like “new” hosts by FOG?

Thanks again!

I am interested in a method to add hosts to a group via CSV import. I understand from searching that there is an API method in FOG versions > 1.4.0 and have read the relevant info to add them via curl. I also know that I could achieve this by updating the SQL database. I just want to know if there is a way to do it by adding a column to the CSV for host import.

My issue is one of lack of time (and possibly preparation) which means that both of those methods are outside of my reach with other project goals piling up. I know… should have prepared. But the way the situation is now, if it’s not possible that would be fine, because we can create the groups after importing the hosts.

Anyway, I just wanted to post this to get a definitive answer as to whether I could add hosts to a group by importing them via CSV file with a column for group ID. I couldn’t get a definite no from the other threads I visited.

I am on version 1.5.0

Bonus material:

This post is related to another post I made about a week ago:

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/11814/image-multiple-computers-with-same-usb-network-dongle

It regards imaging multiple hosts with the same USB-C network dongle. We have roughly 400 hosts to image and are going to do them in groups of 20. Each group of 20 will use the same dongles as the prior group. The solution that we settled on was to just upload a new CSV file for each group to update the existing host definitions. This would have meant 20 CSV files and I was hoping to prepare those ahead of time and that they could also add the hosts to a group numbered 1-20. So that the technicians doing the imaging could just go to the host group and send out a deploy task.

Thanks for reading guys!! I look forward to any insight you may have!

We have a group of about 400 new HP laptops that we need to image. They are lacking a physical network adapter and come with a USB-C dongle instead. Realizing that this will be a problem, I am wondering what solutions are already available for this type of situation?

Couple scenarios:

1. Image each computer with its own unique USB-C NIC. This doesn’t sound like the greatest idea, but might be the quickest if another solution doesn’t present itself.

2. Use the same 20 (or so) NICs and before imaging each next group, update the host definitions before each new group via a spreadsheet and bulk host import. Less physical moving of things, but just about as much effort as #1.

3. Quick image and change hostname later. This could work too, but adds a manual step to the process like the other two by not allowing the FOG client/service to automatically rename and join the domain.

I feel like this could be an issue that becomes larger in the future for FOG users. One thing that crossed my mind was the ability to link the host definition to another piece of unique information, like the serial number. During registration, the serial number is grabbed, that could also be checked when imaging. I know that the MAC address has always been the more reliable globally unique identifier in the past, but with the trend of ditching the NIC in favor of USB dongle, it isn’t always that way.

Anyhow, I’d love to hear anyone else’s ideas on this situation, surely someone else has had to deal with this. What are your solutions?

Noticed that the link to fog.man.reg above is broken. I attempted to extract the file myself using a modified version of the old instructions (unxz init, mount -o loop init initmountdir/, etc.) and am able to get the file, however when I zip back up init it breaks everything.

Anyway, I did end up figuring it out, but thought you would want to know that the link to the file was dead.