Well we have run FOG on xen (it is not the Citix xenserver product) for years. Currently on 1.2 but just today made a copy of the VM to upgrade to 1.3 (We need Vista and to a lesser degree XP). We use it to process old PCs going out the door, DBAN wipe, Bios updates, asset tag removal, and imaging with the OEM OS. We have probably processed over 5,000 PCs (and some Macs, different story) over the years.
Do you have specific questions or just researching?
@Tom-Elliott Thank you for your time. I will look at that. With a backup, I may try it just to see. Current vValue in schemaVersion is 259.
Years back, more than 10 years, ( Yes, long time user, Seems like .26 was my first but definitly by .32 ), I had something similar happen and it was obvious what field was corrupt because when it hit that point in the display of the web page we got garbage.
For this case, I do not have my notes at home but one of the records value when displayed in mysql was about 20 pages of stuff. I recall it was one the the paths and should have been 10 to 15 characters. Most of the rows settingValue in the globalSettings table were empty. I was trying to update the FOG_MEMORY_LIMIT in the Web Gui when I had an issue with the save. After a couple of tries it saved the 384 number but the other values were missing.
What I have done is go through each row and replace it with either the older backup value or what I thought it should be. Tonight, I was just correcting the two rows with the IP addresses because of the wrong value discovered with today’s test.
My old backup had the values for MINIG and the new table did not 
Right now production is a concern and time is short. The web GUI is working again. I will need to test tonight’s changes for the IP address. Today’s test the screen was still red but it had the wrong IP address for the tftp and web server and may need to work on the PXE menu. I have some pxe menu options that were not fully moved over to the newer advanced options that are in settingID=74.
As always lesson learned, consistent backups and get the box updated. This is a xen VM and I have another FOG named newFOG but I did not compare values yet or check what version. In the past I would make a copy and upgrade the copy.
Digging deeper. Yes, the majority of the settings in globalSettings table are blank. During spot checks, I did find two IDs that still have the same value. I have two SQL backups from the same day in 2017 and this looks like it will get me the closest but I am not looking forward to adding 178 records manually.
I do not trust the data in the current table. The only field that has changed is settingValue. The field appears blank but there may be some other value in it. In reviewing the backup most of the records are obvious. But I have made many changes in the ID=74 PXE Advance The PXE screen appear correct, ( other than being red ), but nothing works.
I also have another VM that is labeled “newfog” . I will need to do a comparison to see if the values in globalSettings are different. I do not remember if it is a copy of my original FOG or a new instance of FOG.
Backup early, Backup often.
Remotely did two things, check for linux updates and tried a simple change of bumping Memory setting up another 128 to try and resolve the Inventory Report not working anymore. I had issues with writing/saving the changes in the General Settings tab. The first symptom was not being able to log into the Web GUI anymore. At the workbench, the iPXE menu was displayed in red and selections would not work. Checked the General Settings file and most of the values were blank. (I can log into the Web page). This was an older and reliable install running on a XEN box.
I believe I corrupted the values in the General Setting Tab. I do have several copies of FOG and had no luck copying their values over. Is there an easy way to set these values to default? I do not have a value for the UUID for the installation. Since it is the weekend can these be done via the command line. My search of log files did not make anything obvious to me.
Fri Dec 08, 2023 19:17 pm
Running Version 1.4.0-RC-9.3
SVN Revision: 6069
Update, I created the .fogsettings file and updated. It would not let me update the schema so I added the MySQL credentials (instead of leaving them blank) and update was successful. Things, host, users, images, etc, look good from the FOG webpage. I will do some testing next week. This is a XEN guest so I have copies. We have not imaged yet, (purpose of upgrade was for XP and Vista imaging). DBAN errors out with a chaining error, we use HTTP to load DBAN. I will do some testing next week.
Thank you for your help. In our environment starting from scratch is easy but then we would not be as familiar with our install.
Thank You. Was hoping for the waving of the magic wand. We have been using FOG way back to FOG .20ish days. Was on .32 forever until the server was a victim of a power surge. 1.2.0 is the replacement for us and have been using it since 1.2.0 stable was released. We are getting alot of XP and Vista boxes (University Environment). This is the primary driver for the newer versions. Current Vista images are not resizable images and the XPs were RAW/dd images.
I have worried over this more than it would take to build the new box. This is a xen host and I have a functional guest VM of FOG 1.2, a verified copy of that guest. So I will give this post a few days and proceed with creating a mockup of the .fogsettings and upgrade because the worse thing that can happen is that I will learn something:) As all of us, time is limited. I do have student labor and should turn them loose on building new servers for their experience.
Debian 8, FOG 1.2.0
I am not looking for an answer as to why the files is missing but what is the best path forward from 1.2.0 to 1.3.ish using git.
Options
I am looking at recreating the .fogsettings with known data and runinng install. If I do this do I delete the Variables I do not know?
Would a migration be better? backup and restore of the database?
Call it quits and just build a new box.
Well we have run FOG on xen (it is not the Citix xenserver product) for years. Currently on 1.2 but just today made a copy of the VM to upgrade to 1.3 (We need Vista and to a lesser degree XP). We use it to process old PCs going out the door, DBAN wipe, Bios updates, asset tag removal, and imaging with the OEM OS. We have probably processed over 5,000 PCs (and some Macs, different story) over the years.
Do you have specific questions or just researching?
Tom, Thank you for the quick reply. All things are new including pulling the XP image. Vista images are working. We understand we will be moving from the 1.2 Stable to the current Trunk.
Tom,
Any luck on this issue. After using FOG for years we have started with a new FOG 1.2 environment. We are having the same error as described above with version 1.2 and XP OS.
debug message “/dev/sda1: No such file or directory.”
We use the OEM OS (XP image) after wiping PCs to try and recover some value and provide more assurance that the school data is gone.
Tom,
Thank you for your time. This request is finished and resolved. Corrected the information in the Fog Settings. If I had to guess the admin at the time forgot the FOG password and create another account. I just got the “Your new FOG kernel has been installed” message. I will still do some pulls and puts of known images for my comfort. For the issue that initiated this issue I will test kernels and open a new thread if needed.