Posts made by Deastrom

This might be a tie in with this feature request https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/4408/security-for-fog-users but I’m wondering if a guy can present different ipxe menus in the advanced menu section based on what user is logged in? This user has access to this tool, but should have access to this tool… i.e. an IT deployment tech may need access to an SCCM deployment tool, but a IT Security tech may need access to a recovery tool to which the average IT tech shouldn’t.

I agree, the better solution is AD based and updated base images. We have have that for the majority of the company, but these 230 are one-offs. Specially configured computers for controlling machinery and creating recipes for said machines. Some of them aren’t even Windows, there’s some incredibly legacy operating systems as well.

I won’t be doing any multicast downloading. This is purely 1:1 host to image ratio with cron Uploads and instant Downloads in case of system failure.

Ok, I’ve asked for help on getting some of the FOG features configured to support my FOG as a DRS proposal at work and it’s been ACCEPTED! Thank you all for your help. Now I’m onto the logistics. My count for number of computers looking for support from this server is 230. I do not know frequency of uploads yet, but we can assume that each of these will have their own cron task created for them. Potentially multiple cron tasks if I run into weird scheduling requirements. I have set the average image on server size to 40 GB, that will put me at 9.2 TB. I plan on requesting 12 for growth. I am fuzzy on what the processing hardware requirements should be. This will be going on a ESX server. My question to the community, what kind of power will I need behind this system?

Neat, I’ll have to give this a shot. Thank you guys.

Is there a way to browse the contents of a .img file in such a way that you’re able to view the contents of the original partition that the .img file represents? This would be similar to the Ghost software that allows you to browse a .gho image of a drive.

Not sure if this has been resolved or not, but this site was a great help to me in setting up my Clonezilla PXE boot; http://clonezilla.org/livepxe.php .

you’ll need initrd.img, vmlinuz, and filesystem.squashfs from the .iso or .zip of clonezilla.

Here’s what I ended up with…

:Clonezilla
initrd http://<fogIP>/fog/clonezilla/initrd.img
chain http://<fogIP>/fog/clonezilla/vmlinuz boot=live config noswap nolocales edd=on nomodeset ocs_live_run="ocs-live-general" ocs_live_extra_param="" keyboard-layouts="" ocs_live_batch="no" locales="" vga=788 nosplash noprompt fetch=http://<fogIP>/fog/clonezilla/filesystem.squashfs
||
goto MENU

and that has me booting to Clonezilla just as if I picked the default menu booting from usb.

Thank you all so much for your responses. They were both timely and very helpful. I am very close to implementation of this system (only have a OS/2 Warp on HPFS hurdle to jump) and I’ll be ready to pitch the idea to the server team. I’ll be active in the forums on my findings going down this road (contribute) in an effort to pay you all back for you help.

The question I’ll get in response to this when I go to pitch FOG as our DRS will be; is native UEFI/Secure boot going to be supported (not RAW) in the future? What version when?

I realize this is an opensource software, but this is working great as a DRS so far and is fairly simple to operate, so I’d like to present this solution with the strongest arguments possible.

I will give RAW a shot after we get through our current attempt (This system is running windows 7 so we’re installing the os with all of that UEFI stuff shut off and trying the upload/download without ever turning uefi/secure on). If RAW works with all of that stuff turned on, then, in theory, we’ll be able to support Windows 8 and Windows 10 (which requires UEFI) using RAW images, correct?

I haven’t played around with RAW much, but I’m assuming that there’s no compression algorithm for this. So do I need to make room for the entirity of the 500GB hard drive installed in this system?

I intend to use Fog 1.2.0 as a Disaster Recovery System where I am uploading 1:1 images using cron scheduling and downloading those images as needed using Immediates. The first hurdle I ran into was auto and forced rebooting with fog client and Jbob was a great help with this. Now I’m running into this UEFI/Secure Boot problem with my company’s HP Zbooks and Ztowers specifically. Researching I have found many fixes for getting a restored image to work but they all involve some pretty heavy-handed control; partition editing, os recovery, etc… What I need is a hands-off solution where I tell the computer to recover from its uploaded image and it just works without the user being any the wiser.

Is there a solution in the works or an existing solution that I’m just not finding for UEFI/Secure Boot computers and unattended backup/restores (upload/download)?

We managed to fix this. We had to go into the FOGClient config.ini which is located in the etc folder of the FOGClient installation folder. We had to change forcerestart under the taskreboot from 0 to 1. That’s all. If anyone has wiki access to change the Client setup page, please be sure to include this.

We do use Symantec, could this be blocking some of the modules from starting correctly?

Just attempted another immediate upload task with the force start on and it’s been around 20 minutes yet with no reboot. (just an update)

Everything is enabled but nothing is ‘in use’. I don’t have groups set up nor have i changed any settings from defaults save for the pxe boot menu items. After I verify items work as intended with a the ‘unnecessary’ features left on and alone I’ll go through and start narrowing the services down. The only thing I want to do are cron-style uploads that will forcefully shut down a work station to start the process (only get certain windows in a week for some of these systems) and on-demand image downloads (instant deployments) in the event of a disaster situation.

Forward thinking, after I get this working, I’d also like to have 2 versions of an image for a workstation (or two image containers/images) one for the current upload and one for the previous just incase something bad piggy backed into the newest upload, but that’s after this hurdle.

Here it is.

[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1996_fog.log.txt?:”]fog.log.txt[/url]

I’m not sure. So I’m uninstalling it. i realized though that I installed it as my AD login instead as the Local Admin login, so I’m going to do this new install as Local Admin.

I’m only working on one windows 7 machine currently. This server build is in the proof-of-concept stage, but yes, FOGclient is installed on it.

[QUOTE]“OS2 Warp on HPFS and German MSDOS machines” are capable of running the fog client? i’m confused[/QUOTE]

No, those will be purely iPXE user reboot. The reboot task is a problem for our windows machines which is the majority (80/20 rule).