Posts made by bluedude

@george1421 @sebastian-roth

Thank you both for your help. I am trying to understand as much as possible before asking questions. I did confirm with my boss that we are using a Windows Server 2012 R2 for DHCP and was able to find this. It looks like we are only setup for undionly.kpxe. Thee were the only entries.

There is an IP address above undionly.kpxe, I just didn’t want to show our internal IP address. That IP address does match what is on the FOG web server.

So I should be able to just follow the link @Sebastian-Roth sent me for Using Windows Server 2012 (R1 and later) DHCP Policy, correct? My question for that is for Step 3, does the “ASCII” field value determine the string value for Step 10? If I go with PXEClient:Arch:00007 in step 3, can I still choose the string value of snponly.efi or would I have to use ipxe.efi?

Another idea I had wanted to ask about is the possibility of editing the scope option for 067 Bootfile Name from undionly.kxpe to snponly.efi. Would this be a quicker and easier way to test if snponly.efi or ipxe.efi will work before doing the DHCP policy?

@george1421

Hello george1421,

I don’t believe I am using dnsmasq or an isc-dhcp server. I believe we are using a Windows Server 2012 R2 for DHCP. I would have to ask my boss about that to be sure.

Although I am confused, I thought FOG wasn’t setup to handle UEFI originally. I thought you would have to change it from legacy BIOS to UEFI to allow for ipxe.efi. I mean none of our ByteSpeed’s would connect to FOG unless we configured the BIOS for each machine CSM for legacy BIOS.

So should I try updating FOG and the kernel first before changing anything?

@sebastian-roth

Hello Sebastian-roth,

So to configure with snponly.efi how do I do that? I haven’t found any instruction on how to do so.

Secondly, you mentioned to do a firmware upgrade to the latest version. Are you referring to FOG or the Lenovo’s? I believe the Lenovo’s M75s BIOS are fully updated.

Hello,

I have another question about some new computers we got. We got 6 new Lenovo M75s computers that are UEFI only. When I try to PXE boot, this is what happens.

After this, the machine proceeds to boot up to the Windows 10 installation we put via a USB. All of my other machines when we do PXE boot get to this screen by FOG for image deployment.

So I believe the reason why these Lenovo’s are not getting to this screen is because all my current ByteSpeed’s can be chosen to be set to UEFI or BIOS for PXE boot. We set the ByteSpeed’s all for legacy BIOS and they can get to FOG project screen with no issue and deploy my images to them. Although since these Lenovo’s do not have this option, my FOG server must be configured for legacy BIOS only. Someone please let me know if I am correct about this assumption.

In case anyone was wondering what I have done to the Lenovo’s, I have disabled secure boot, disabled IPv6 network stack, and set the primary boot sequence with PXE.

One last thing to mention is that my FOG server is out of date. Would a simple update fix this issue? Perhaps changing the kernel?

If updating or kernel change won’t work, then I believe my options are:

1. Since it is only 6 computers just use Windows USB installation.
2. Change all ByteSpeed computers from legacy BIOS to UEFI and configure TFTP for snponly.efi or ipxe.efi
3. Configure TFTP for BIOS and UEFI Co-Existence

Any help you can give is greatly appreciated. I am still new at this and still learning. If am wrong about anything or my assumptions, please let me know.

Thank you
Bluedude84

@Sebastian-Roth Hello, sorry it took so long, but I finally got my hands on a USB/SATA adapter. I was able to use disk management to have a look at the drives.

This is what I got as soon as I launched disk management.

I changed it to make it online, and then it changed to this.
Image Continued

The good news is that out of the 5 drives, I was able to use diskpart command via the command line and clean 4 of the hard drives. Once I cleaned those 4 hard drives, I was able to reconnect them and access the BIOS and get to FOG to deploy an image. I think I will just toss the 5th hard drive. Its pretty old and it is only a 80GB drive. Not sure if these photos will give you any information as to why this happened or what I did to cause this.

@Sebastian-Roth Figures I would screw up something this bad. I don’t have time today to try that. I do have a Lenovo desktop, in the building somewhere. Once I find it, I’ll try connecting it to that and see if it is able to boot.

I tried to hot swap in a bad image hard drive. I thought it read you could do that with SATA connections. I kept good drive connected initially, and booted into Windows 10. Once I was in, I reconnected the bad image drive and opened disk management. Unfortunately, it would only recognize the hard drive with the good image. It did not recognize the bad image hard drive. I do not have a USB/SATA adapter,. My buddy may have one. I am going to ask him if he does, if I could borrow it. Although, its going to be a few days before I can do any of this.

@Sebastian-Roth I scheduled the debug and plugged in one of the four hard drives with the bad image. PXE is enabled and first priority to boot and this is all it is doing.

F2 or DEL does nothing and will not let me continue any further.

@Sebastian-Roth So I am not sure what you are saying in that first paragraph. Are you saying I shouldn’t capture with resizable because FOG can’t resize it anyway? What should then I set the Image Type too then?

Also, I stated that the pics yesterday is from a working image. Yesterday, I over wrote the bad image in FOG with this good capture. Although, the bad image is still on these 4 nonfunctioning hard drives. Whenever I have one of these four hard drives plugged in, even with a another good hard drive with a good image and with PXE enabled with PXE set to boot first, the machine is unable to do anything.

I will try and schedule a debug, but I doubt it is going to work. I will let you know if it does.

@Tom-Elliott
Hello Tom-Elliott,

I was able to get access to one of the user accounts. Here is the info you requested.
ls -l /var/www

ls -l /var/www/html

@Sebastian-Roth
So I was able to figure out the password to one of the user accounts on Ubuntu. I was also able to get XRDP installed and working. I was able to finally get the information you asked for. Although the bad image that I had, I copied over with a capture that is working. I don’t know if this is going to help anymore, but here is the info you requested.
d1.partitions

d1.minimum.partitions

d1.fixed_size_partitions

@Tom-Elliott
Hello, I haven’t used Ubuntu since college so I don’t remember it that well. Plus I am not the one in front of it at the the site its at. When we tried to install xrdp using the command sudo apt install xrdp it asked for a password. I don’t know the password and neither does the new network specialist. We don’t login to the account, the account is always just active.

For the BIOS, it shows on the splash screen to enter press F2 or DEL, which I do. Although it refuses to do anything with the hard drive still plugged in that I either deployed that bad image too, or when I try to capture from. The splash screen just sits there. Last night I deployed that new capture and the machine finished and restarted. It sat there the entire night at the splash screen, until I came in this morning and removed the hard drive. As soon as I did, boom I could press F2 and access the BIOS.

As for the FOG version, I don’t have access right now, but here is what the web server shows.

Hello Sebastian Roth,

Thank you for trying to help but I have hit a wall. This FOG server is not at my site and I am not able to get to the physical server. I tried to have someone else install xrdp so I could remote in but we need the password for sudo and none of us know what it is. I contacted the previous network specialist and he does not remember what it is. I fell like Hal from Malcom in the Middle. I found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnxj7osSjNU and it seems pretty straight forward, but I have to clear it with my boss before we do it.

As for making the image resizable, we do have hard drives that vary in capacity from 80GB to 2TB. I assume that is why he choose resizable.

I didn’t know you could schedule a debug task. Although I doubt it will matter because the very first hard drive I captured, I set the BIOS CSM to on and all devices to legacy BIOS. Then I made the network card the first priority and after the capture it could never get past the BIOS splash screen unless I unplugged the hard drive and swapped it out.

Since I’ve run into so many access problems, I think I will just close this issue for the time being. I think its something I am doing. I am going to redeploy an old image, just do windows updates, and then just capture it and see what happens.

Thank you for trying to help.

Hello this is my first post because I am at completely out of my depth and this is driving me crazy. We have a computer running as a FOG server running Ubuntu. As far as I know the FOG server is running fine, but it is running version 1.5.7 and the kernel is 4.19.48. I know that the FOG server is out of date, but I don’t know if that is causing the issue or if it something I am doing. So the issue is that I have these Nexlink computers. They are old and not many left and the image that we have for them is over a year old now. I would like to update the image on the FOG server for them. I have free time and tired of wasting a bunch of time when I have to image one and apply a ton of Windows Updates. So I have 3 times now fully updated a NexLink computer and done a capture.
The steps I take to fully update the computer are:

• Fully update Windows 10
• Fully update Smart Notebook and drivers
• Update Java
• Disk cleanup delivery optimization files, Windows Update Cleanup, Windows upgrade log files, recycle bin, and system restore and shadow copies
• Remove any user profiles
• Add some specific shortcuts to the desktop: Word, This PC, and VLC player

For my capture I have the same options as the old image. They are:

• Operating System Windows 10
• Image Type Single Disk Resizable
• Partition Everything
• Image Enabled Checked
• Replicate? Checked
• Compression 6
• Partclone Gzip

I schedule the capture and restart the client Nexlink and the capture starts. The captures finishes and the container in the fog server shows that it is taking up this much storage and the date/time captured. The client Nexlink restarts and then it stops telling me to press DEL or F2 to enter BIOS and I can no longer use the machine with that hard drive plugged in. I can’t even access the BIOS by pressing DEL or F2. I can’t access the BIOS again, unless I replace the hard drive with a different one. This has happened to 4 different hard drives.

Lastly, here is what is driving me nuts. After the third try, I swapped out for another hard drive that had an older image on it. I did nothing to it and did the same steps to capture it. It captured just fine and I could still boot up the client Nexlink hard drive after the capture.

So its got to be what I am doing that is causing this, but what? Also are these hard drives completely unusable now?

Please help
Thank you