After many try&error runs, I managed to sign the files and to boot into the FOG menu with secure boot enabled. And I can deploy an image, register the host and do all the other things except boot from hard disk. Whenever I choose this option in the FOG menu he just goes back into the menu.
When I boot directly from the hard disk it works and also if I disable the secure boot option the FOG menu can boot from hard disk.

What could be the problem here? Oh and while I was troubeshooting I updated Ubuntu from 20.04 to 22.04 and FOG to 1.5.10

@oelked I’m not sure I understand.

What is Persistent Groups plugin not doing that you’re hoping for?

Don’t get me wrong, a plugin building is a good time, as it helps you learn how to hook and event things in the FOG UI as well as potential interactions with other elements as possible. Just I don’t understand the scope of the problem you’re having that Persistent Groups couldn’t address.

@zguo Here is an unattend.xml file that I used back with windows 7 and later with windows 10. I have to be clear I don’t do as much imaging as I did back in 2022, so I don’t know if this unattend.xml file is still valid. It should be, but start with it and see where it takes you. https://forums.fogproject.org/post/87392

Staring with a proper unattend.xml file is the key to getting a good target deployment. You will want to use this command when you call sysprep. c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /quiet /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:C:\Windows\Panther\Unattend.xm

Sysprep will still remove something out of your target image. But you can put most back on a deployment by using the unattend.xml file to create user accounts, connected to AD, and name the system as well as changing the local. If the option is not avaialble in the unattend.xml file, there is a batch file that gets called at the end of winsetup called setupcomplete.cmd you can put commands there to create users or install software that must be installed after imaging is complete, or use the first run section of the unattend.xml file with the auto login option for the first time windows boots, auto login to the desktop, run the first run section of the unattend.xml file then reboot.

@professorb24 Here is a wiki page on the fog client install and setup: https://docs.fogproject.org/en/latest/installation/client/install-fog-client/

The unattend.xml file is a windows thing. There are many resources on the internet that discusses its setup: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/update-windows-settings-and-scripts-create-your-own-answer-file-sxs?view=windows-11

The unattend.xml file is an auto answer file used by the windows setup program to preanswer all of the questions that the installer might ask during installation. There are even answer file generators on the internet that you can answer a few simple questions and it will create the answer file in the proper format like this one: https://www.windowsafg.com/win10x86_x64_uefi.html (I would be careful entering your actual license key on a internet web page, just edit the answer file when you get it by hand to include your key).

I also have some tutorials on fog post install scripts. This one has code snippets at the bottom of the post that discuss the unattend.xml file and how to potentially update the file with the script. https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script The way the forum works read the first post and then scroll to the end to read the second and third posts in the series.

@mashina hd isn’t a “true” kernel argument, and as such isn’t built as an environment variable at load up. As the OS loads, the getHardDisk function will get called and make its best guess to what drive to use.

If you want the specific disk of a host to be /dev/nvme1n1, then you should set it on the host under kernel device (or if it’s always global, set fdrive=/dev/nvme1n1 on the extra args instead of hd=/dev/nvme1n1)

@J-Redshaw I suspect yours is likely related to Bitlocker encrypting the free space of your drive.

https://forums.fogproject.org/post/134625

@george1421 Thanks a lot, it works !
Have a nice day and thank you again !

@fadi you can try re-running the installer.

I don’t know why you have /images2 and /images2/dev, but re-running the installer should re-associate the missing directories, permissions,ant .mnt file (I cannot remember the full name of the tester file sorry)

@Thierry-carlotti said in iPxe boot fails : Coud not boot :Permission denied (https://ipxe.org/0216eb8f):

iPxe boot fails : Coud not boot :Permission denied (https://ipxe.org/0216eb8f)

This really sounds like secure boot is enabled keeping ipxe from loading/running.

@45lightrain Lets cover a few things that I’m aware of that might help you get to the bottom of the issue.

When you have a ProxyDHCP server and normal dhcp server on your network you will get two dhcp OFFERS. Well I guess it would be the same if you had two dhcp server you would see two offers, but that is a bit off point. You can tell if an OFFER packet is a proxy dhcp packet because dhcp option 60 will be set to PXEClient in the ProxyDHCP OFFER. That is a signal to the pxe booting client to come back and ask about pxe booting from the ProxyDHCP server. The pxe booting client will ignore the pxe boot information from the main dhcp server. A properly formed dhcp packet will have both the fields in the header {next-server} and {boot-file} filled out for the bootp booting protocol part of the protocol AND should have dhcp option 66 and 67 set for the dhcp booting protocol. Both must be filled out because its up to the pxe booting client to pick either the dhcp or bootp protocol. Your ltsp files are correct. The last one you posted has the dhcp-range… commented out, that turns off the proxydhcp feature in dnsmasq.

SO if you have a pihole server that runs dnsmasq, why are you running an external dnsmasq server. Does your pihole server have pxe boot options? I know pfsense has built in pxe boot fields you can fill out that supports dynamic (bios/uefi) boot loaders.

When trying to debug this wireshark/tcpdump is your friend that tells you what is flying down the wire. Just remember that dhcp is based on broadcast messages so you can “hear” them from any network port, and proxyDHCP like other unicast messages must be captured at the source, destination, or via a mirrored port.

@flodo First let me say I don’t know Ansible, I know of it but that is about it. So I always force my way through things.

But with imaging there are two approaches to take.

Leave bread crumbs (deploy time configuration info) behind for the target OS to pick up with its internal setup program to consume. In the MS Windows realm that might be mounting the C drive and updating the unattend.xml file with deployment time settings like computer name, calculated target OU, timezone, etc.

Using a FOG postinstall script to mount the root partition on the target computer and use a bash script to make system changes like set the hostname in /etc/hostname and other parameters that the target system will need at first boot. If you can script it with bash you can probably update it in the target linux OS. When you are done, you would unmount the mounted partition and then let FOG finish with the deployment and reboot the target computer. I have an example of how to do this for windows, it can easily be translated to linux.

If you wanted to go the ansible route, then you need to identify what you need on the FOS Linux OS and then we/you will need to include that plus the ansible code when FOS Linux is compiled. It is not as hard as it sounds. You need to find the dependencies needed for ansible and then update the buildroot configuration to included the dependencies. FWIW: the FOS engine does have ssh server installed, but with only one user root. So to login remotely to the FOS Linux engine you need to give root a password then you can connect remotely to FOS Linux over ssh.

@ian77 That is strange that the storage variable points to /images2 and yet /images gets mapped.

Now understand on the FOS linux side it will be /images/dev, but what its mapped to should be /images2/dev.

So you are in debug capture mode. What you will do is confirm that the storage variable is pointing to you /images2/dev directory.

The first step is list manually try to mount the directory to see if nfs is working correct…

Please post the output of /etc/exportfs, the fsid variable needs to be different between the /images and /images2 paths if they are the same you will get exactly what you are seeing. It placing the files in the wrong directory.

/images should have fsid of 0
/images/dev fsid 1
/images2 fsid 2
/images2/dev fsid 3

once we sort out the fsid I’ll continue with debugging instructions.

@helian

Hi,

Which Distribution do you use?
there is many solutions for this Problem.

Example:
1- you have to edit your dhcp-range

I do not use the fog server as DHCP-Server. But i can help u if u have Debian Distribution 😉

nano /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

find the line like this:

subnet 192.168.14.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { range 192.168.14.10 192.168.14.100; option routers 192.168.14.1; option domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4; default-lease-time 600; max-lease-time 7200; }

you can setup the range of DHCP-Server as u want. I will prefer from 150-230. be careful just edit the last octet do not change the your whol network.

Restart ur DHCP Server

systemctl restart isc-dhcp-server

Now you can reserve the IP-Adresses in the file DHCP-Leases. In this file you will find every Host in this network. You can use Every IP-Address under 192.168.14.150. do not use the IP-Address of the FogServer or any IP-Address which is already in used.

Nano /var/lib/dhcpd/dhcpd.leases systemctl restart isc-dhcp-server

I hope that i could help 🙂

Solved. It was the init.xz file that was customised for our environment, The default was applied and seems to be working now.