@londonfog as long as you don’t put any custom files in /var/www/fog you should be good. I have pmagic on my fog ipxe menu and put the files in /var/www/pm11_winpe and the permissions for the files are correct.

This is what my ipxe menu item parameters look like:
set tftp-path tftp://${fog-ip}
set web-path http://${fog-ip}
set pe-path ${web-path}/pm11_winpe
kernel ${tftp-path}/wimboot gui
imgfetch --name BCD ${pe-path}/BCD BCD
imgfetch --name boot.sdi ${pe-path}/boot.sdi boot.sdi
imgfetch --name bootmgr ${pe-path}/bootmgr bootmgr
imgfetch --name boot.wim ${pe-path}/boot.wim boot.wim
boot || goto MENU

Got it working! This worked for me after making sure the drive was changed to GPT and I also labeled the efi parition as “EFI”:
menuentry “Windows” {
insmod chain
insmod ntfs
insmod part_gpt
set root=(hd1,gpt2)
chainloader (hd1,gpt2)/efi/microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

Just realized that the set root part is redundant. I am partitoning the drive now to copy the files from the FOG USB key then tell the UEFI on the PC to boot from this new GRUB partition first. Looking good!

Try updating the Kernel drivers? I’ve seen varying ipxe performance from different hardware. For example, I’ve seen ipxe boot faster on an Optiplex 7020 vs 3020 which is a newer model.

@george1421 There wasn’t any doubt on my end…but I can imagine you read that and said to yourself “of course it did…”.

Success! Dropped the files into /var/www and used set web-path to ${fog-ip}. In case anyone else has this issue this is my iPXE menu item parameters:
set tftp-path tftp://${fog-ip}/os
set web-path http://${fog-ip}
set pe-path ${web-path}/pm11_winpe
kernel ${tftp-path}/wimboot gui
imgfetch --name BCD ${pe-path}/BCD BCD
imgfetch --name boot.sdi ${pe-path}/boot.sdi boot.sdi
imgfetch --name bootmgr ${pe-path}/bootmgr bootmgr
imgfetch --name boot.wim ${pe-path}/boot.wim boot.wim
boot || goto MENU

@sebastian-roth Sounds good. My NEW secondary FOG server is up and running on 20.04.

@george1421 I just tested it out on a PC outside of our IT vlan with success. I hard coded it already, but I have a habit of not disclosing our IP addresses even if they’re private. I get the Press ESC to show the menu option for one second, then it boots to the hard drive. Now I took the modified bootx64.efi from my usb drive and copied it to the Windows EFI partition, replacing the existing one (renamed the old to bootx64.efi.bak), made sure that the UEFI is pointing to the file, and now the PC boots the fog process without USB.

@rogerbrowntdl dnsmasq runs on the FOG server to detect architecture and boot type then serve the boot files over tftp. This is my understanding of how it all works:
PC sends DHCP server a request for an IP address with a pxe packet.
DHCP assigns an IP address then directs (relays) the PC to the FOG server.
FOG Server handles this request by sending either undionly.kpxe or ipxe.efi depending on the architecture of the PC (dnsmasq tftp service).
PC downloads and executes the correct file.
After that FOG loads the boot menus.

@george1421 Ah I see. Run the dump from the secondary FOG server without having to dump on the primary to a share, mount the share on the secondary, then import. I currently don’t have creds set on mysql on either server. I’ll look into setting creds then try to run mysql -h<hostname> to test.

@george1421 Those creds worked, but I was prompted for the password. Is there a way to put the password in-line with the command so it runs w/o interaction?

Nevermind found it here

@rrtern Just wondering, did you create a route between the two subnets? The firewall(s) may also need rules to allow pxe, http, and tftp traffic between those subnets. I didn’t see anything mentioned about routes so that’s why I asked. For instance in pfsense, by default different VLANs can communicate with each other. But at my job’s network environment they have to create routes so that vlans and subnets can communicate.

I can say that we aren’t constantly imaging and reimaging PCs in our environment. The FOG server does a lot of idling. I do the most because I’m always working on golden images and testing. But that’s about it. I don’t think I could make a solid proposal to my employer to pay a small team full-time for full support of FOG. It wouldn’t be feasible. If anything we need to get more people using FOG instead of other very expensive imaging solutions. If the community grows then you’ll have a higher chance of gaining a few more volunteers.

@george1421 Ah ok I misread the OP. Well last time I checked, True Image can still create a boot image ISO with Windows kernels in addition to Linux kernels. If I’m not mistaken I believe you need to have the Windows ADK suite installed in order to create a WinPE boot ISO.

@Pitohui
How big is the ISO file? Perhaps you can try the sanboot or memdisk methods?

What about the wimboot method?
This is my ipxe entry for booting PMagic11 that is WinPE.

set tftp-path tftp://${fog-ip}
set web-path http://${fog-ip}
set pe-path ${web-path}/pm11_winpe
kernel ${tftp-path}/wimboot gui
imgfetch --name BCD ${pe-path}/BCD BCD
imgfetch --name boot.sdi ${pe-path}/boot.sdi boot.sdi
imgfetch --name bootmgr ${pe-path}/bootmgr bootmgr
imgfetch --name boot.wim ${pe-path}/boot.wim boot.wim
boot || goto MENU

You’ll have to extract the files listed above from your Acronis ISO. Download the latest wimboot from here.

You can place wimboot in your /tftproot and download it via tftp, the rest of the files you can place in /var/www/acronis to download via http and make sure to change ownership to fogproject:www for all the files in /var/www/acronis.

Any reason why we can’t use SMB instead of NFS for deploy/capture? An .smbcredentials file can be stored securely and creds can be sent securely. Just wondering because I couldn’t find anything related to the topic and I don’t know if the devs have tried this already.

@george1421 As you said those ports are dynamic, however I found a way to lock some ports to make sure they don’t change from this thread

I did everything except RPCRQUOTADOPTS and the post init scripts ran fine without delay. I’m assuming this won’t change as I had to restart the nfs-kernel-server.service to apply the changes. Hopefully this will stick.

Small note at the bottom of the linked thread, make sure you allow the ports in ufw.

I want to disable IPv6 on my FOG servers but want to make sure that FOG does not need it. That is all.

@george1421 Ah so that is a dynamic port for both incoming and outgoing? Because I noticed in the logs that the outgoing kept changing but incoming 41257/tcp remained constant. I’ve read the NFSv4 tutorial and it does seem a bit involved. I have to study it further until I’m comfortable to move from v3 to v4.

THAT WAS IT!!!

I had to allow incoming 41257/tcp and now the postinit script runs and the customhostname script runs without delay!

@george1421 I found this after running netstat -anp | grep 41257

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:41257           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      903/rpc.mountd 

I will try to allow TCP 41257 incoming and report back.