Posts made by DarkSwordsman

@Sebastian-Roth It appears the UEFI Network boot selection is not available. Only the PXE option from Legacy works.

Amidst me trying to load different pxe binaries onto the server, I rm -rf /*'ed in root, so I destroyed the server by accident. Just made a new one and thankfully I have a PC with the existing image in tact with no modifications.

Is there a more in-depth guide to setting iPXE binaries? I was messing around with custom fog.local parameters using all sorts of iPXE commands I found on their site. It’s definitely getting the changes, but I can’t tell if it can’t load the bootloaders or if it the bootloaders can’t find windows.

So it appears the following happens:

BIOS types:

• select… - : blinking cursor
  SANBOOT : blinking cursor
  GRUB : starting c.main()…
  GRUB_FIRST_HDD: starting c.main()…
  GRUB_FIRST_FOUND_WINDOWS: goes to grub> cli
  REFIND: blinking cursor.

Running “geometry (hd0)” when GRUB_FIRST_FOUND_WINDOWS shows the cli gives me:
" drive 0x80(LBA): C/H/S=1023/255/63, Sector Count/Size=16434495/512
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xEE"

UEFI: All of the options lead to blinking cursor.

Hey Guys,

So I was able to experiment a little bit and I realized that, by default, it’s booting using the BIOS option, and not UEFI. I had GRUB_FIRST_HDD set for BIOS and REFIND_EFI set for UEFI, and it used GRUB.

I don’t know if that helps us identify an issue. Also, I am into computers and programming, but this whole DHCP thing and handing out efi binaries just goes over my head. Are there any guides, start to finish, on the process? I tried following the one on your wiki but I just don’t get it.

@Sebastian-Roth Thanks for the reply. We have to figure out the user and password for the Ubuntu server so we can edit files, but this is what I found:

In boot.php, these are the lines you mentioned:

choose --default fog.local --timeout 3000 target && goto ${target}
:fog.local
imgfetch ${boot-url}/service/ipxe/refind.conf
chain -ar ${boot-url}/service/ipxe/refind.efi || goto MENU

In our refind.conf, these are all the options (I excluded all white space):

timeout 5

textonly

scanfor internal,manual

uefi_deep_legacy_scan true

scan_delay 2

default_selection Windows

menuentry "Windows" {
    volume 0:
    ostype: "Windows"
    loader \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
    enabled
}

I’ll play around a bit once we get the linux credentials back. Looking forward to your reply.

Hey @Tom-Elliott @Sebastian-Roth I am back at the LAN center and was able to test with a new version of refind.efi from http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html

I noticed there were two refind config files. One is refind.efi and the other is refind_linux.conf. I went into both of these and set one to 5 second timeout and the other to 10 seconds. It didn’t pick up either of these settings.

I want to understand, what do you mean by setting up the DHCP to hand out EFI binaries? I can boot into the FOG menu just fine and I can deploy images and what not. It’s just that when I select “Boot from Disk” in the FOG PXE menu, the default option, none of the bootloaders seem to work.

I can also confirm that it’s picking up the different boot loaders when I change them. Grub and Sansboot both come to the error c.main() issue or whatever, and Refind.efi comes to a blinking cursor.

So, firstly, is there something I need to do to get refind.efi to see the config files in the first place? And secondly, what do I need to set, if any, in the config files to make it see the OS?

Currently trying to download a new version of refind, as suggested by someone on the internet somewhere.

I dunno, I’m tired and just want this to work. It’s ridiculous that it’s not working by now.

Edit: Ah, yes, it was on this site: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/11993/refind-pxe-booting-issue

Refind is definitely not picking up the config file. I restarted our VM twice and no luck.

Also, @Tom-Elliott your suggestion to cp the config file without any other parameters didn’t make much sense to me, but it apparently worked for another user. What am I missing from your cp suggestion on that thread?

Edit: Thread for reference: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/12356/refind-conf-doesn-t-appear-to-be-used/5

Is there anything I can put into the fog.local parameters or Boot Options? Would there be a reason that refind.efi is not picking up my refind.conf file?

So I’m kind of tired of this at the moment. I’m 90% certain it’s booting into Windows, but it’s not booting into it correctly.

I swear that in my previous IT experience, I have seen the blinking cursor issue, and it had to do with trying to legacy boot Windows instead of EFI booting through Windows Boot Manager.

If I set the boot device to UEFI Hard Disk: Windows Boot Manager it boots into Windows 10 fine, but REFIND_EFI and GRUB_FIRST_FOUND_WINDOWS both result in the blinking cursor, a common Windows issue with booting.

It also feels like refind.efi is not picking up my changes in the configuration file at all.

I tried to enable the graphics menu with timeout 0 and textonly 0 at least to just see if there is anything.

Refind didn’t pop up with any menu at all.

So upon further research, it seems it is picking up Windows and refind_efi is working as expected, kinda. Except, I think refind is seeing the disk that windows is on and not Windows Boot Manager itself.

@Tom-Elliott The blinking cursor is exactly as it seems, a blinking cursor in the top left of the screen, and that’s it.

It goes PXE boot > FOG Menu (selects default: Boot to Hard Disk fog.local) > screen turns black for a couple seconds > blinking cursor.

The blinking cursor error usually occurs, IIRC from experience, when you try to legacy boot right into the disk that Windows 10 is on, and not going through Windows Boot Manager.

@Tom-Elliott Okay.

I just tried booting into http://10.1.0.50/fog/service/ipxe/refind.efi from the ipxe CLI and it came to the same blinking cursor icon. This tells me that something is up with refind.efi itself, and that fog is likely actually respecting the exit type properly.

I’ll do some digging, but is there anything you can suggest for this?

So I was able to start modifying the refind_efi.conf file. I tried the following settings:

scan_delay 5
default_selection Windows
scanfor internal,external,hdbios,biosexternal

I checked and Windows is on a GPT disk, not MBR.

The current issue is that, even with the scan_delay 5, it seems like it isn’t even doing anything. I don’t even think REFIND_EFI is even being loaded, even though I see refind.efi in the fog/service/ipxe directory.

@Gordon-Taylor Did you ever get this working? I’m currently facing the same issue and looking for a solution.

@Sebastian-Roth @Tom-Elliott

So I should clarify. These PCs can Legacy PXE boot just fine, and it works with FOG as expected when it boots (I.E: I can select “Deploy” from the menu and image it, as well as set a deploy or capture task and then it will automatically start imaging when I go and manually PXE boot). The real issue is that the FOG client isn’t booting into the hard disk when the default (fog.local) option is called. I haven’t been able to get it to work at all with any exit type, on both BIOS and UEFI options.

Now also to clarify, when Legacy + UEFI is selected, the traditional PXE boot as well as the UEFI Windows Boot Manager are both available, so there theoretically should be nothing stopping FOG from seeing that, at least in my eyes.

So is the issue then that the FOG client over the Legacy PXE boot is a different client that can only see Legacy boot devices (I.E: the HardDisk and not Windows Boot Manager)? Do you think that UEFI Network booting with those DHCP changes will allow the FOG client to see the disk for some reason?

I’ve dug all over the internet for FOG not booting into Windows and the best I could find were unresolved posts on this forum.

Also, here are the MoBo/BIOS specs for these PCs:

@Sebastian-Roth said in Auto Deploy restarts PCs, but boots back into Windows:

https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/BIOS_and_UEFI_Co-Existence

We have a whole batch of identical systems. I’ll have to check when I get there what motherboard it exactly is, but I’m pretty sure they are ASUS motherboards.

I should clarify that these PCs can still PXE boot normally with Legacy + UEFI mode enabled, it’s really just the exit type that is not working. Even if there is no exit type, it can reboot after it’s done, PXE boot, and still go to the menu if there is no task and select “Boot to disk” (fog.local) by default.

If I can at least get the Exit type or, preferably, fog.local option working (so it doesn’t reimage every reboot), it would solve our issues.

@Tom-Elliott Thanks for the information. We can look into setting up our DHCP server to do that. Do you have any documentation in the wiki for this?

@Sebastian-Roth When I go back to the LAN center later today, I can send you more information on it, but essentially, we have tried every exit type with no luck.

Any form of GRUB results in the starting c.main() bug that I’ve commonly seen across this site (and not resolved).

SANSBOOT and REFINEFI cause a single blinking cursor.

I was trying to see if I could add any sort of parameter to our default fog.local menu item, but I couldn’t find any information on it.

Hi everyone,

We recently opened a LAN center with about a hundred PCs. So far, fog has been great, especially for multi-casting.

However, auto deploying from the web client hasn’t been working as expected.

We have 96 computers in one group. I set the default image, and then go to deploy to the group. Once I deploy, the computers restart, as expected, but they boot back into Windows, and then periodically keep restarting until their task is done or cancelled.

We were originally playing with the idea of keeping PXE boot on and using the exit type to boot into Windows, but no matter what I can’t get it to work on UEFI with Windows Boot Manager. These motherboards unfortunately only have “UEFI” or “LEGACY + UEFI”.

I would like to be able to just image at the click of a button and have it done within 30 minutes (we seem to be able to image at 250 MB/s each, up to 10 at a time, and the rest queue automatically), especially since we are open for a majority of the day and we want to keep the experience consistent across users.

Currently, with Gizmo running on the PCs to keep time for the players, Gizmo restarts the PC on logoff, and I have a script to delete the profile and remake it. This lets the games stay on there so they don’t have to be re-downloaded (even though we have Steam and Blizzard caches) but it clears and user data like Chrome or Steam sign ins.

What can I try? Is there any more information I can provide to help?

Thanks,
Kyle