@BedCruncher said in Mount and Extract files from images:

I know in the case of adding something I would have to go in and recompress the image and basically get it back to the proper directory and named the proper way at least according to what FOG expects for its own operation. Long term that isn’t what I was thinking about. It was more to be able to at least open an image in a read only format and be able to get access to the image and all files stored within without needing a host box to restore the image to. Espescially if the host box I have on hand is sufficiently different from the original and it BSOD’s on boot.

When you restore to another box, you don’t have to boot it. What I do is place a second drive in a machine, pull the image to that drive then boot from the first drive, you can then access the files with in the image as a second drive on the machine, never actually booting the image. Then just recapture if any changes are made. No need for having the same hardware.

I see many advantages to FOG and the reason I chose it over the other 2 you listed are as follows:

• It’s free, so no license issues and in a non-profit that is a great thing
• It can run on nearly any hardware, so I have it running on a PC that we were retiring anyway.
• I can select a PC tell it to image and have it WOL anywhere in the building and PXE and image it. I never have to touch it and it is up in less than 20 min.
• I can push software and scripts that may not be easily pushed via GPO
• I can build in other utilities into the PXE menu easily for troubleshooting
• I have a rudimentary inventory system
• I feel that I get better support than some of the paid solutions, and comparing to clonevilla or WDS definitely better support in the community.

Disadvantages in my personal opinion are few:

• Need to have Linux knowledge(although having Linux knowledge is a advantage in the industry)
  The other disadvantages I used to see, when I first found FOG in the .3x days have been corrected/added. I would like to see what others feel are disadvantages.

Hopefully that helps you and glad you had the ability to learn and see what FOG is capable of.

FOG creates an account named “fog” to do all of it’s functions. It is very bad practice to use “fog” as the account for you to login as this account gets a random password set by the installer. I am guessing that the account is getting locked out due to password violations caused by FOG. I would create a different account for you to use such as FOGAdmin or whatever and let FOG use the local “fog” account.

@JJ-Fullmer Not the best solution, but one work around I had done for a program that I had the same issues with is to schedule a task to install the software. I created a snapin that setup a scheduled task (using SCHTASKS) on the client and then kicked off the task before finishing. This allowed the program to come up in the user session and either be interacted with or in your case run the autoit script. I tried to find that script but I must have deleted it because I can not find it anywhere. But that may give you a starting point to try.

No the host would not lose it’s group. Host can be a part of multiple groups. Just make sure you only change the service settings in the “all” group. A group is just a mass change to the hosts contained with in that group.

There are multiple ways to accomplish isolation with access to everything. The first way is to have dual NICs eth0 would be connected to the imaging network and give DHCP to the isolated network, then eth1 would go to production. You would then access the web GUI from the IP address on the production network.

The second way that I have mine setup which gives isolation for sake of avoiding accidental imaging on the production but allows snapins and everything to work well is to have a separate vlan associated to imaging. I have a vlan setup in the tech area, on only one switch, FOG handles DHCP, but the vlan has access tot he rest of the network. This setup allows me to join AD after imaging, and fully configure the freshly imaged machine. But once I deploy the machine I can still push snapins and get login data but no PXE is setup on the production side.

Both have there merits and drawbacks, so it is your choice.

As for throttling you can set that up in the Storage Management page, it is under the bitrate spot, you would enter the number in bits/sec if I am not mistaken

@Tom-Elliott said in Protect Host from Imaging:

Are you guys aware of image ignore?

Just to clarify what Tom is talking about is on the host management page next to the MAC address there are 2 checkboxes the second one is “Ignore MAC for Imaging”

IF you log into your Pushbullet account go to settings and click on “Create Access Token”, Copy the code it gives you. Then go to FOG and click on “Link an Account” under the pushbullet management and copy the code. You should then start receiving notifications.

@Wayne-Workman I don’t think this is really where FOG should go. That adds a lot more into the system that is not within the goals of the project. Printer management right now has nothing to do with the server and quota side. This would entail software that would track all the print jobs. If you are looking for this type of system I would recommend looking in to the solutions already available such as PyKota or QPS(Quota Printing System). Disclaimer, I have never used either of these but they are more targeted to your needs and keeps FOG simpler and more focused.

In my opinion this goes along with a comment you made a few days ago in another discussion.

The little things DO count. This is how Linux developers have been forever, little things count. Little efficiencies here and there add up. With the mindset of “Oh, that little thing, I don’t care”, soon with many of those you have a bloated inefficient system - like Windows.

If we keep adding features tot he system it gets bloated and harder to maintain. We have to remember the @Developers are doing this in spare time and each feature takes away from the core of the system. If someone could work on a plugin to integrate one of the current solutions I think that would be a better solution.

Comparing FOG to a browser it like taking Chrome 5 years ago and comparing it to today. Yes it was snapper 5 years ago, but had less features. Plug ins will slow down a browser just like it could FOG, but then each user has the choice of what they need.

Sorry for the long winded comment, but just wanted to give my thoughts on the matter.

@george1421 @robin correct me if I am wrong, but I have heard of a similar situation. It was a lab in a school that taught both Linux and Windows based classes. It was a poor man’s deep freeze/avoiding having students go into an OS that isn’t needed.

Class A needs Windows, so scheduled task at 7 am is image computer with Windows.
Class B(same lab) needs Linux, so 11am image lab with Linux.

This results in the lab always ready for the class and has a clean image each time.

This could be different software packages, versions of Windows, etc. But this is what I think the request as asking for.

*Did you check the client log on the machine that didn’t join the domain? Domain joining is completely separate from snapins, that doesn’t even need to be pushed it is a check every time the client connects.

*Did the snapins appear in the tasks que on the server?

*Also did you check any of the client logs of those hosts to see why snapins where not deploying?

*What OS are you using, both on the server and client. Very hard to troubleshoot and correct bugs without information.

@Tom-Elliott Why not just have a check for spaces and not allow spaces in the filename? I don’t see the issue with just giving an error message “Filename contains spaces, remove spaces and try again”. This seems like a better way to go anyway. As filename spaces can cause headaches in other ways too, especially in automated processes.

The only reason I had spaces was due the file pre-existing and I was too lazy to rename before now. lol

I second that. Mine are backed up daily anyway, but more backups have never really hurt anyone.

Ubuntu 14.04
FOG 1.3.0 rc-1
Windows 7
Client 0.11.4

I just updated to RC-1 today and deployed my first machine. After updating the client on the image(for some reason 0.9.10 client won’t update to a newer version automatically). The machine joined the domain and then started to deploy snapins, after a little while I realized that I wasn’t getting notifications of the snapins completing so I checked and all snapins (except the first one) showed canceled. I tried redeploying all snapins and the same thing happened. So I checked the client log and the second snapin showed:

ERROR: Snapin has does not exist
So I skipped it and the rest would all complete fine. I then tried re-doing that snapin and it kept giving the same error. After I realized that it had spaces, I removed the spaces and re-uploaded the file to FOG and the snapin now works.

Can we either correct the issue to allow spaces, or just have a check that will display an error if the snapin file name contains spaces?

Not sure when this started to happen as I was still on 7961 and upgraded from there.

This was a change made a while back in trunk. The credentials are used to backup the database during the install. This is also present in a few spots throughout the dashboard in that it will ask for your password to export any information. This is just to harden the security of the system. If you want the installer to backup the DB before making changes follow what this message is telling you, if you don’t want to backup the DB then you will be fine.

@Wayne-Workman True, I get that. I am just hopefully clarifying what the OP seems to be asking for. Like I said I can see merits in both ways of doing things.

@Wayne-Workman Yeah, I had classes like that too. But it all depends on what is needed. I can see merits to both ways of doing it. With some of the labs today though I have been seeing the micro desktops, so removable trays may not be an option any longer. Plus you have a higher risk of HDD failure with the removable trays, due tot he moving of them.

@george1421 @robin correct me if I am wrong, but I have heard of a similar situation. It was a lab in a school that taught both Linux and Windows based classes. It was a poor man’s deep freeze/avoiding having students go into an OS that isn’t needed.

Class A needs Windows, so scheduled task at 7 am is image computer with Windows.
Class B(same lab) needs Linux, so 11am image lab with Linux.

This results in the lab always ready for the class and has a clean image each time.

This could be different software packages, versions of Windows, etc. But this is what I think the request as asking for.

@Wayne-Workman It does look like they both are, those are just the 2 that I have heard about before. Like I said I haven’t used either of them, so I can’t speak as to their merits or shortcomings.

http://www.pykota.com/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/qps/

@Wayne-Workman I don’t think this is really where FOG should go. That adds a lot more into the system that is not within the goals of the project. Printer management right now has nothing to do with the server and quota side. This would entail software that would track all the print jobs. If you are looking for this type of system I would recommend looking in to the solutions already available such as PyKota or QPS(Quota Printing System). Disclaimer, I have never used either of these but they are more targeted to your needs and keeps FOG simpler and more focused.

In my opinion this goes along with a comment you made a few days ago in another discussion.

The little things DO count. This is how Linux developers have been forever, little things count. Little efficiencies here and there add up. With the mindset of “Oh, that little thing, I don’t care”, soon with many of those you have a bloated inefficient system - like Windows.

If we keep adding features tot he system it gets bloated and harder to maintain. We have to remember the @Developers are doing this in spare time and each feature takes away from the core of the system. If someone could work on a plugin to integrate one of the current solutions I think that would be a better solution.

Comparing FOG to a browser it like taking Chrome 5 years ago and comparing it to today. Yes it was snapper 5 years ago, but had less features. Plug ins will slow down a browser just like it could FOG, but then each user has the choice of what they need.

Sorry for the long winded comment, but just wanted to give my thoughts on the matter.