Posts made by flipwalker

@george1421

No bitlocker enabled, so I’m not sure why it’s not resizing that partition. I’m in the middle of another image capture attempt, and though it captured the OS partition quickly(and then took 15 ish minutes to move on to the next one after the ‘Cloned Sucessfully’ message) it’s back to the thing where it’s stalled for no apparent reason and dropped back down to miserable speeds.

I am entirely mystified about what is going on. It doesn’t seem to be consistent in what it’s doing. sigh Is there something else I can grab to help identify what’s going on?

@george1421

New update. Because I was frustrated I just let the laptop sit on that screen as I worked on other things. I’m not sure how long it took, but it was eventually completed. However, when I look at the FOG image list, I’m confused again.

The presysprep image is reporting as 442 GB (should be around 30ish used, with the full partition being 442ish). I understand that this would be the client’s size, but shouldn’t it have shrunk the partition down to minimum size with resizing turned on? (like the image above it, which technically has much more data, but is reporting as a smaller size).

I’m sorry for all the questions, but I feel like I’m missing something obvious here.

@george1421

Any more ideas? I just went back in and deleted everything other than system created partitions and it’s still giving me this screen. Speed is where I’d expect it, but it refuses to complete the process.

@george1421
It was black and white under the blue cloning screen, as the blue screen moved up one line, and on the bottom, there was a black and white message.

@george1421

So I’ve been doing some more experimentation. Just tried a different laptop, the same model. I deployed the image that I have successfully captured(though very slowly). It deployed okay. Not as fast as I’d hoped but seemed fairly steady at least.

I then made a few minor changes(that I had forgotten initially) and attempted a recapture, putting it back on zstd. This went blisteringly fast, up to 97%. As in within 5 minutes, it was 97%. Then it hung again and took another 10-15 minutes to ‘complete’ but then hung on the ‘Cloning Successful’ message. I do think I noticed something new, I don’t THINK it had attempted the 500MB recovery partition. I think it had captured the first small system partition and the second ‘main’ partition with the OS, but I don’t think it got to partition 3 (recovery) or the empty partition 4 for some reason.

Regardless, I powered the laptop down and rebooted it to make sure it would. I noticed that partitions 2 and 4 hadn’t been resized back to the original, so I expanded them back out, shut down again and I’m currently trying a new capture, this time using Gzip, to see if that works. Currently, I’m 21 minutes in, and only 43% on the main partition. It’s doing the same ‘hang’ for long periods of time with 0 progress. Update: It also hung at the same point.

Does any of this help?

Edit: So I’ve /maybe/ started to narrow it down. I went back to zstd. But I decided to delete the ‘recovery’ partition, as unneeded. I’ve now captured 2-3 times, in about 3-4 minutes each, except I’m still sticking on ‘Cloned Successfully’ before it hits the last partition(Currently empty). I’ve tried doing it both as resizeable, and nonresizeable. But the speed is what I’d expect to see. Does this point to anything?

@george1421

I understand completely. I’ll try to provide feedback as I can.

1. I would personally doubt that this is the issue. The server is quite over powered for what it’s being asked to do (72 x Intel Xeon CPU E5-2697 v4 @ 2.30GHz (2 Sockets), 256GB RAM, RAID10 array of drives).

2. This could be the issue, or at least I certainly can’t think of a way to eliminate it.

3. Again, can’t eliminate it as I’m far from an expert in Proxmox

4. This I think I can at least put as a low probability. I’m currently running another image, and it’s showing the same symptoms. For instance, it went to 15% complete in 20 seconds. Then hung on the same block for over 3 minutes before completing a couple more percent and hanging again.

5. I think I can eliminate this as well, as I’ve just moved locations of imaging with the same result.

6. This is possible, I could try another laptop.

Here are two images illustrating what I’m talking about. Second image was taken just after I noticed it was going again, and then it stopped shortly after I took it.

@george1421

The reason the speed is odd to me is with the old server speeds were significantly faster. I used to(a year or two ago) be able to capture a similar image in a matter of 15-20 minutes. I wish I had more current history, but I’ve been out of control of this server/image process for a year or more, but as I’m the one who originally set it up, when it broke it got dropped right back into my lap.

The compression number was left as default, which shows as 6 currently.

I have not tried to image in the server room, that’s something I could attempt, and I won’t try to argue against infrastructure, as part of this unfolding drama was a series of power failures about 2 weeks ago.

The Proxmox server is not busy. It has one secondary Domain Controller for Active Directory, and now this image server. The goal is to get 1-2 more servers built onto Proxmox, but currently, the old stack is still primary. Even when everything is on this server it should be a minor load, as it’s an isolated network supporting 4 classrooms with a maximum of 20 laptops per classroom.

I am currently running on a single NIC from this server though. I need to figure out that issue soon, but I hope it’s not already an issue. I wish it was as easy for me to get the equipment I need as some people seem to think it is. eyeroll But that’s not your issue, I just need to either find some more ethernet nics, or get my superiors to spring for fiber(which is what 2/4 of the nics in the server are, yay for hand-me-down equipment).

Okay, so sounds like the next step is to try capturing from the server room and check to see if it’s raw image capture. Hopefully, my robocopy finishes soon and I can try that.

As a side note, thank you for your help. I wish I had better answers for you, but I’m a completely self-taught admin, and as such my knowledge has huge holes in it, as I learn what I need to put out whatever fire happens to be dropped in my lap.

@george1421

I made sure to download the latest versions of the kernels yesterday as part of my installation, as that was a problem I had run into in the past. So… 5.15.34, it looks like.

I don’t have an answer for this one. When I make my next attempt I’ll make sure to take a picture of it. Hopefully, the next attempt will be shortly.

There’s 116 GB used during the last attempt which took 45 minutes. All of that is on 1 partition, the other major partition(excluding the system-built recovery partitions) was completely empty until last night when I started copying the rest of the files over.

The capture rate tends to start at 20ish GB/min, and steadily falls until it hovers around 1 GB/min.

The target computer is a physical laptop with 2 TB NVMe drive.

Hm. As for the FOG Clients… I’d guess 0, or nearly 0. Fresh install, different IP from the server that just failed that I couldn’t figure out. Even if all the previous clients were connected, it would be nearly 0 at the moment, as most of the laptops are put away. 100 at max load though.

New install of dev branch version: 1.5.9.154 on Debian 11.
Hosted on ProxMox server
Attempting to capture Win10 client, multiple partitions, using single disk resizeable settings(also tried multiple partitions, single disk not resizeable). Tried both the default image manager(Zstd I think) and partimage(update: the last time I tried, while it took 45 minutes, partimage, with single disk resizeable settings, worked, I’m not transferring the rest of the files to the master image before running sysprep and seeing how long it takes when the image is full size).

When I try capturing the image it seems to complete and displays a successful message at the bottom of the screen, and then hangs. When I visit the image folder, I can see a mac folder in /images/dev/ but no folder for the image in /images/. I don’t know that it’s related, but the capture process seems to run very sporadically. It’ll go fairly quick, and then hang for a few minutes, fly through a few more percent, hang, rinse and repeat.

I’ve been beating my head against this server for one reason or another for 12 hours today, and I’m not sure where to go next, but we desperately need this working ASAP. Any ideas or things I can provide to give you a clearer idea?

Philip

Sorry, should have looked more closely at FOG before asking this. I see the export/import options.

Philip

Good afternoon,

As stated in my subject we ran into a problem attempting to image today. We’re running 1.5.5 FOG on Ubuntu 18.04.3. When we push the image(we’ve tried multiple different images and multiple different laptops) it comes up with the “Image store Corrupt, Unable to locate MBR” error.

When I go to the image location(vhdx stored on a SAN), I can see the folders for our various images, but I don’t see any files in the associated folders. I’ve never actually looked in these locations, but I have to assume this is bad, m’kay?

We have had numerous power issues in the past week that’s caused issues with our other servers as well. Can anyone offer any insight? Is this normal(no files in the image folders), and if it’s not, any ideas on if it is recoverable, or if we need to recreate images?

If we need to recreate I will probably just recreate the whole server on our new stack and eliminate the SAN from the equation.

Thank you,

Philip

@Sebastian-Roth So good news and bad news. The bad news is that I am running a Ubuntu server. Good news is that the failed update appears to have saved me from problems. At least my server still seems to be functional. My other problem(my problem, not FOG problem it turns out, stupid fast boot), is fixed(crossed fingers) and I’m capturing with my 1.5.5 server right now. Guess I’ll wait to try updating again until 1.5.8 comes out.

Philip

Good evening,

I’m running into a couple of problems, but the one that pertains here is a similar problem while trying to upgrade from 1.5.5 to 1.5.7(I think, sorry I’m at home right now trying to get some research done before going back to work tomorrow). I haven’t checked the logs yet, but it’s failing at the same point. I’ll check tomorrow to see if my log is the same and let you know. I’m hoping upgrading solves my other problem, if not I’ll post another post about that one later.

Philip

@george1421 thank you for your responses. The timeout is fine the way it is, as long as I understand how it functions. Just need to turn it up while I join 100 clients to it. Though, since you say it’s probably a layer 8 problem on the group based multicast, I’ll try to find the time to run a few experiments on my side and see if it’s now working. I have a fairly simple network (air gaped single subnet educational lab), so that shouldn’t be the issue.

The repeating multicast would be handy but, as you say, there are certainly potential issues there as well. Again, as long as I understand the mechanic I can work with it! Thanks again for your answers(and all your help in the past as well).

Philip

Good afternoon,

I’ve been using FOG for a year or two now and love it. However, one thing that still confounds me is how the multicast feature works. I have a couple (semi)specific questions:

1. How does the ‘Timeout’ function? In previous imagine solutions I’ve used every time you join a new client to the multicast it restarts the timeout, but that doesn’t seem to fit the way I see FOG multicasts function.

2. If clients don’t join catch the multicast before the timeout hits, they seem to just sit there patiently, not doing anything. Will the multicast restart at the end of the push, thereby catching the latecomers?

3. I’ve tried using the ‘Multicast to group’ feature in the past(I think one version ago), but it never worked for me(and seemed to be broken on the coding side from feedback I had got at the time), and I haven’t tried with the current release, is it more functional at this point? Or is it a layer 8 issue on my side?

I appreciate your patience and responses, I know most of this I could probably figure out by trial and error, but I’m extremely multi-hatted and short on time(aren’t we all?) and sometimes it’s easier just to get feedback from those who know rather than experimenting myself. (also, I hope these haven’t been answered before, I tried to search but that link seems to be broken for me…)

Philip

I know this is an old topic, just wanted to reiterate that this fixed my problem. The weird thing is that this wasn’t a problem until today. Been using Fog with the same laptops, same basic install of Windows 10 for around 1.5 years now, and today was the first time I saw this error. Went and turned off fast boot and it works great. Yay for forum search functions.

Philip

@vascomorais Seems like your question has mostly been answered, but I wanted to pipe in on your comment ‘I can ask the forum’. YES! These forums are amazing. There are numerous people(Including senior developers) that will respond quickly and intelligently and assist you with problems you have with the system. I can’t say enough good about this community.

Hope FOG works for you, it’s been a lifesaver for me and my organization!

Philip

@tom-elliott Updated the production server and it is now multicasting. As a side note though I tried to start a ‘test’ session of multicast, the same name I had used pre-update, and it did the same thing(started and instant ended). But if I picked a new name that I hadn’t used before, it appeared to start and wait for connections normally.

Philip

@walkerit To expound a bit on @Quazz 's comment, I ran into this yesterday myself. There’s two different config locations that I found needed to be updated. One of them I’m led to believe will only come into play if you update the server, but the other (export? https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Change_NFS_location) is what was causing my permission issues.

Hope that clears it up when you do change your storage location.

Philip