Introduction

First I have to say this article contains the results of many brilliant people and is not my content. I’m only assembling this information into a consistent document instead of spread around buried in posts and responses. My intent is to not dig into the details behind the scripts or how to tweak them for your needs. You can read the links below to figure out why things are being done the way they are. I wanted to create a tutorial that was as close to a cut and paste to get driver injection going in your environment. Now I will primarily focus on Dell hardware for the main reason that Dell does supply driver archive files (known as .CABs) that can be downloaded and extracted quickly to create the driver structure. I’m sure that HP, Lenovo, and others have similar driver packs.

You can download the Dell driver cabs for your hardware from here: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/enterprise-client/w/wiki/2065.dell-command-deploy-driver-packs-for-enterprise-client-os-deployment

Reference links:
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/4278/utilizing-postscripts-rename-joindomain-drivers-snapins
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script-under-construction
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/8878/fog-drivers-script-will-not-run-correctly-in-postdownloadscripts/46

In this series if posts I plan on outlining what the FOG post download script is, what its about, and how to use it to your advantage with image deployment.

I’ve debated with myself if another post was needed since Lee https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/4278/utilizing-postscripts-rename-joindomain-drivers-snapins and I https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7391/deploying-a-single-golden-image-to-different-hardware-with-fog have written tutorial about them in the past.

Where I want to explore with this series of posts is more about the background behind its function and to cover some of the script elements from Lee’s and my previously linked tutorials.

First of all lets get a little background here and some terminology defined. The FOG image deployment system consists of three main components:

1. The FOG management environment. The FOG management environment is the FOG server itself, which is responsible for planning, scheduling, instructing and documenting the image deployment.
2. The FOS (FOG OS) target engine {need better name here}. The FOS target engine, or FOS (as it will be known in this document) is responsible for capturing and deploying images from the defined storage node, as well as other actions on the target computer. FOS is actually an FOG Project created high performance linux operating system that was specifically constructed to image target computers. We have to remember for the rest of the tutorial, FOS is a linux based operating system that is used to deploy any OS image to your target computer.
3. FOG Client. This is an add on utility service for windows and linux, which is installed on the final or target OS. The FOG Client queries the FOG server for instructions and actions. I’m not planning on discussing the FOG client during this tutorial since it is out of scope in regards to post installation scripting.

The FOG Post install scripts give FOG system admins the ability to inject actions in the image creation process. To allow this custom scripts to run the developers added an external call into the image deployment sequence. Just after the image is placed on the target computer’s storage device, the FOG server calls a script in the /images/postdownloadscripts directory (on the FOG server). That script is called fog.postdownload. The fog.postdownload script is created when the FOG Server is installed. In its default state the script doesn’t do anything much. It is just a place holder to call your custom post install scripts. As I mentioned the fog deployment process calls this fog.postdownload bash script just after the image is placed on the target computer’s storage device. Once all of the external post install scripts have completed the FOG server completes the imaging and data recording steps.

While the post install scripts are stored on the FOG server in the /images/postinstall directory, they are executed by FOS running on the target host. So you have to remember when writing your post install scripts, they execute from the perspective of the target host. The post install scripts have limited access to resources on the FOG server (outside of the /images directory), but have full access to the target host. As noted above, these scripts run on a linux OS, so any resource (programs) available to linux operating systems can be run against the target host. I want to make this distinction to make it clear that FOS is linux and not MS Windows based. So you can not run MS Windows based applications, like DISM, in your post install script. FOS and linux is very powerful, but also limiting in some ways. As long as you are aware that MS Windows based applications can not run in a post install script then you should have little trouble. There are some cross over applications that are compiled for both MS Windows and linux, you just need to ensure you have the correct application for the OS and architecture (IA32 or X64).

The developers found this issue to why the log file grew so big (after almost a year of log file collection). The log file will now be capped at the log file maximum set by the fog configuration settings. This was just a fluke case that caused this file to grow to an abnormal size.

The fix / log file limiting code will be in 1.3.5RC11 when its released.

What you need to understand that the FOS Engine (the customized linux operating system that captures and deployed images on the target computer) is a complete linux OS. It is built with 2 halves. The first part is the the kernel (bzImage) which contains the core linux functions as well as the compiled in device drivers. And the second part is the virtual hard drive (inits) which contains the linux utilities, programs, and fog command scripts. When you PXE boot a target computer into the iPXE menu, certain iPXE menu options will send the bzImage and inits files to the target computer. The iPXE menu will also send specific kernel parameters to tell the FOS Engine (linux) how to react when it boots.

You can take the FOS Engine (bzImage and inits) and just as easily boot directly from a usb flash if you use grub as your boot loader. The FOS Engine will boot from the USB stick without requiring the FOG server to be online. The FOS Engine won’t do much without the proper kernel parameters being passed from the FOG server. But in the end FOS is a specialized, high performance, standalone linux OS.

Now for specifics, I don’t have the details from inside FOS, but I suspect there is something in /etc/init.d that calls the main fog script called /bin/fog that script. The fog master script reads in the passed kernel parameters and then selects the proper task to execute.

Preface

The bits I’m going to cover here are the general outline of what needs to be done to create and deploy a hardware independent image across your fleet of computers. In this tutorial I’m going to discuss how to do this with Dell computers. I know this process works with Lenovo, Intel NUC, and a few others with some caveats. I’m going to touch on some steps that you need to do in MDT to build your universal reference image, but I’m not going to discuss how to setup MDT to create your reference images. There are plenty of examples on the internet on how to do this.

This process makes use of a custom script that gets executed post image deployment but prior to the reboot of the FOS client. This step is vial since we need to make some tweaks to the windows environment pre first windows boot. This is the key. I can’t/won’t share that script I created because of my contract with my employer, because it is derived work because of my employment. So that script is intellectual property of my company. I’ve held the job title of unemployed, its not a great title. The pay stinks, the stress level is high, but the hours are great. I don’t plan on going there any time soon, so no script for you. BUT, sitting here on my zorin (ubuntu) dell laptop I should be able to reverse engineer the important parts to give the crafty scripters here the tools they need to create their own post install script.

Our master image is created following the standard Microsoft SOE guidelines, meaning MDT to build the reference image, sysprep to reseal the image, use a custom unattend.xml file (required to make this process work for Win10) and some disk imaging tool to capture and deploy the image to the target hardware. In this process sysprep is mandatory since we want to create a single image that can be deployed to any hardware. The generalize process of sysprep removes all hardware references (for the reference image) so that when windows first boots it goes through the hardware discovery process. Without sysprepping the image the process I’m going to discuss will not work. So use sysprep.

When I started out creating this process for FOG, I began with the process we created for deploying Windows XP from a usb stick using Ghost. In that process we would automate the image deployment with ghost to lay a hardware independent image onto the target hardware and then detect the current hardware using a DOS program that would query smbios to get the target hardware. Then once the target hardware was known we would move the correct driver pack into a location where windows would find it on the first boot. This worked extremely well with Windows XP. So I took the knowledge that I had from that process and tried to do something similar with FOG.

I do have to say I did not think up this entire process all by my self. I did start the design base on the information found on this wiki page. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Auto_driver_Install This page and associated scripts gave me just what I needed to take our xp/ghost process and covert it to windows 7/FOG. So without that wiki page the remainder could not be possible.

Setting up the foundation for installation

Hopefully this setup will be pretty clean and easy (just hoping…)

In this tutorial, I’ve personally setup each distribution and booted it into a virtual machine. I didn’t run the installer to completion, but I did ensure the installer was running as far as I took the install (unless otherwise noted).

These setups were only tested with a bios (legacy mode) target computer. They WILL NOT work with uefi systems. For uefi based systems they have their own kernel requirements and options. The intent of this tutorial was to show its possible to boot your installation media via pxe booting.

First we need to setup the storage locations for our boot images. The plan is to put the installation media on the /images nfs share and the boot kernel and initfs in the tftp boot directory.

mkdir /images/os
mkdir /tftpboot/os
mkdir /mnt/loop

For the foundation setup that should do it. On to the OS specific configuration…

Link to Windows 7 & Windows 10 BIOS Mode Only
Link WinPE 10 for BIOS and UEFI based systems
Link to Centos 7
Link to Ubuntu 16.04.03
Link to Ubuntu Desktop 19.10
Link to Ubuntu Server 19.10
Link to Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop
Link to Ubuntu 16.04.03
Link to Linux Mint 18.1
Link to Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon
Link to Debian 9.2
Link to OpenSuSE Leap 42.3
Link to Fedora Workstation v26
Link to Fedora Workstation v27
Link to Ubuntu Desktop 17.10
Link to installing Samba on your FOG server
Link to Kali Live 2017.3
Link to ESXi v6.5u1
Link to ESXi v6.7u2
Link to SystemRescueCd 5.2.2 x64
Link to GParted 0.33.0 x86
Veeam Agent Rescue DVD
Acronis 2018 (WinPE version)

Use dnsmasq on the fog server to supply the pxe boot information.

The quick steps are this.

1. Remove the pxe boot information from your router.
2. Install dnsmasq service from your linux distribution’s repo
3. Make sure its at least version 2.76 by issuing this command at the fog server’s linux command prompt sudo dnsmasq -v The version needs to be 2.76 or later.
4. Create a configuration file called ltsp.conf in /etc/dnsmasq.d directory.
5. Paste this content into that file.

# Don't function as a DNS server:
port=0

# Log lots of extra information about DHCP transactions.
log-dhcp

# Set the root directory for files available via FTP.
tftp-root=/tftpboot

# The boot filename, Server name, Server Ip Address
dhcp-boot=undionly.kpxe,,<fog_server_IP>

# Disable re-use of the DHCP servername and filename fields as extra
# option space. That's to avoid confusing some old or broken DHCP clients.
dhcp-no-override

# inspect the vendor class string and match the text to set the tag
dhcp-vendorclass=BIOS,PXEClient:Arch:00000
dhcp-vendorclass=UEFI32,PXEClient:Arch:00006
dhcp-vendorclass=UEFI,PXEClient:Arch:00007
dhcp-vendorclass=UEFI64,PXEClient:Arch:00009

# Set the boot file name based on the matching tag from the vendor class (above)
dhcp-boot=net:UEFI32,i386-efi/ipxe.efi,,<fog_server_IP>
dhcp-boot=net:UEFI,ipxe.efi,,<fog_server_IP>
dhcp-boot=net:UEFI64,ipxe.efi,,<fog_server_IP>

# PXE menu.  The first part is the text displayed to the user.  The second is the timeout, in seconds.
pxe-prompt="Booting FOG Client", 1

# The known types are x86PC, PC98, IA64_EFI, Alpha, Arc_x86,
# Intel_Lean_Client, IA32_EFI, BC_EFI, Xscale_EFI and X86-64_EFI
# This option is first and will be the default if there is no input from the user.
pxe-service=X86PC, "Boot to FOG", undionly.kpxe
pxe-service=X86-64_EFI, "Boot to FOG UEFI", ipxe.efi
pxe-service=BC_EFI, "Boot to FOG UEFI PXE-BC", ipxe.efi

dhcp-range=<fog_server_IP>,proxy

6. Be sure to replace <fog_server_ip> exactly with the IP address of your fog server. Be aware that <fog_server_ip> appears multiple times in the config file.
7. Save and exit your text edit.
8. Issue the following command to restart dnsmasq service sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq
9. Ensure that dnsmasq service is running in memory by issuing this command ps aux|grep dnsmasq. You should see more than one line in the response. If its running then go to step 10.
10. Ensure that dnsmasq starts when the system is rebooting with sudo systemctl enable dnsmasq
11. PXE boot a target computer.

Dhcp option 93 to hardware type table

DHCP option 93 Client architecture|
0 Standard PC BIOS
6 32-bit x86 EFI
7 64-bit x86 EFI
9 64-bit x86 EFI (obsolete)
10 32-bit ARM EFI
11 64-bit ARM EFI

@julianh A SSD for only the OS will not add much value making FOG go fast. The critical data path is from /images -> nfs -> network -> target computer.

NOTE: Changes in FOG's code since this article was written have made it harder to use NAS' as storage node with FOG. If you use a NAS with FOG 1.5.x and beyond the FOG replicator will continue to cycle and recopy files over and over again.

Part 1 NAS Setup

So far I’ve setup what should work from the synology NAS side of the fog storage node. This has NOT been proven to work just yet. So far the synology nas has been configured to what “should work”. On my test NAS I’m using DSM 6.0.

The following is just my short hand notes that will be used to create the actual tutorial. I’m out of time tonight to complete the docs for this.

The first thing we need to do is setup our NAS with the required network shares. To do this you need access to the Synology NAS’s web console. Log into the web console as admin and do the following.

1. Control Panel->Shared Folder
   Create new share
   Name: images
   Location: volume 1
   Checked Hide this shared folder in My Network Places
   Checked Hide sub-folders and files from users without permissions
   Press OK
   NFS Permission (tab)
   Create new Permission
   Hostname or IP: *
   Privilege: Read/Write
   Squash: No mapping
   Security: sys
   Checked Enable asynchronous
   Checked Allow users to access mounted subfolders

2. Control Panel->Shared Folder
   Create new share
   Name: snapins
   Location: volume 1
   Checked Hide this shared folder in My Network Places
   Checked Hide sub-folders and files from users without permissions
   Press OK
   NFS Permision (tab)
   Create new Permission
   Hostname or IP: *
   Privilege: Read/Write
   Squash: No mapping
   Security: sys
   Checked Enable asynchronous

3. Control Panel->Shared Folder
   Create new Share
   Name: tftpboot
   Location: volume 1
   Checked Hide this shared folder in My Network Places
   Checked Hide sub-folders and files from users without permissions
   Press OK
   NFS Permission (tab)
   Create new Permission (we only need this nfs shared for setting up the storage node)
   Hostname or IP: *
   Privilege: Read/Write
   Squash: No mapping
   Security: sys
   Checked Enable asynchronous

4. Control Panel->File Services
   Select Win/Mac/NFS (tab)
   Checked Enable NFS

5. Control Panel->File Services
   Select FTP (tab)
   Checked Enable FTP service (no encryption)
   Checked Use the default port range

6. Control Panel->File Services
   Select TFTP (tab)
   Checked Enable TFTP service
   TFTP root folder: tftpboot (this is the share name we created above)

7. Control Panel->User
   Select User (tab)
   Create user foguser
   Name: foguser
   Description: FOG User
   Password: fogremote1 (pick your own secure password)
   Conform Password: fogremote1
   Checked Disallow the user to change account password
   Press Next
   Join to group: users
   Press Next
   images: RW
   snapins: RW
   tftpboot: RO
   Press Next
   (Assign quota as needed)
   Press Next
   Assign application permissions: None
   Press Next
   Speed limiting: None
   Press Next
   Press Apply

8. Control Panel->User
   Select the Advanced (tab)
   (scroll way at bottom)
   Under User Home
   Checked Enable user home service
   Press Apply

That completes the setup of the Synology NAS.

In the next part we’ll test the network shares we setup above and create the remaining flag files and directory structure needed to transform the Synology NAS into a FOG storage node.

@oraniko What hardware are you using?

On my campus I have 15 standard hardware where I deploy 1 image to then and then copy the appropriate driver files during FOG imaging.

Ref: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7391/deploying-a-single-golden-image-to-different-hardware-with-fog
Ref: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/8889/fog-post-install-script-for-win-driver-injection
Ref: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script
Ref: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/4278/utilizing-postscripts-rename-joindomain-drivers-snapins

@tomtom2770 You need to do the vpn as site to site so that its transparent to both the servers as well as client computers then it will work.

Also the FOG server isn’t secure enough to have it public facing. If it is truly public facing its a security risk to your organization.

FWIW I would NOT install 1.6 just yet (dev branch or not). Stick with 1.5.9 (dev branch if you want). The 1.5.9 is much more mature and stable of a product than 1.6.

@robpomeroy said in Fully automated UEFI-based O/S installation (Debian 10):

But grubx64.efi seems to have some hard-coded files it looks for, so I’m not sure where else to place them.

Also be aware there are different flavors of grub. There is grubx64.efi and grubnetx64.efi depending on the distro where you get them from some distros don’t add networking support to grubx64.efi so it can only reference local storage.

You can pxe boot with grub in the case of grub (grubnetx64.efi) from ubuntu’s repo on your tftp server create a grub directory mkdir -p /tftpboot/grub and place your grub.cfg file in there. That is hard coded into the grub binary as you noted.

@robpomeroy Well I’m not sure how much direction I can provide but I have instructions on pxe booting into Debian 10.7 live here: https://forums.fogproject.org/post/140524

I do need to create one for the dbi command line installer, but it should be fairly similar to your setup except you don’t need to use grub at all can be done with iPXE. The key for the dbi installer is to pass the URL parameter to point to the preseed file.

If I were to rewrite your grub.cfg file over into ipxe format then (caveat is that I have not tested this, so its just a best guess as a proof of concept)

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/os/debian/Server10.7/linux
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/os/debian/Server10.7/initrd.gz
imgargs linux auto=true url=http://${fog-ip}/os/autoinstall/debian-10/preseed.cfg hostname=debian-10 domain=local interface=auto vga=788 noprompt --- quiet
boot || goto MENU

@dominique said in Database engine MyISAM - upgrade FOG?:

No high CPU usage noted for the moment.

The high cpu usage is an artifact of having many computers with the FOG Clients installed.

But changing the database engine isn’t without risks, I presume.

From testing we see no risk other than the default no-date value is incompatible with some of the new sql defaults in mysql/mariadb. Changing the mysql startup value allows you to get pass this issue.

Will an update of fog change this engine? I’ve read about 1.6.0, but that’s no stable version?

I can’t personally speak about existing installed databases, but new FOG installs with use the innodb engine.

Another question, we have 1 master and 80 storage nodes. If I update, first the master or the storage nodes first?

If you are talking specifically about the database, there is only one database and that is on the master. The storage nodes remotely use the master node’s database. So if you update the master node mysql database all of the storage nodes will use it immediately. You may need to reboot each of the storage nodes once the database has been updated just to be sure.

@dominique You can switch it to innodb. There are several tables that use an “invalid date” that cause the table conversion to fail on older version of fog. That date format is “00/00/0000”

Have your db admins review this thread where we work through the transition: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14254/high-cpu-usage

@dominique What do you propose to upgrade the db engine to?

@rogalskij The FOG developers are expecting the Linux kernel developers will take 5.10.x to LTS status. When they do the FOG developers will make 5.10.x the standard kernel in FOG. ref: https://www.kernel.org/

FWIW, there was quite a few new drivers added to 5.9.x series (almost as many as was added to 5.5.x), so 5.10.x LTS can’t come fast enough because FOG will start running into that hardware soon.

@rogalskij said in Issue deploying image to new Dell Latitude 5410:

My Kernel version is 4.19.143

There is an upgrade kernel that is not LTS supported that has the drivers for 2019 and 2020 computers. Upgrade your kernel to 5.6.18 from FOG Configuration -> Kernel Download both the 32 bit and 64 bit kernels.

@joyboy11111 Since you are using Centos 6, that is Sys-V compliant OS so that would be service dhcpd restart or service dhcp restart. Or just reboot your server.

Almost all modern Linux OS use systemd commands, which is what I gave you previously.

@geardog said in ClearOS-DHCP, Fog, PXE, & dnsmasq:

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If you read the tutorial those greater and less than signs should not be in the final config file. They are part of the variable name. Once you clear that up it should work. The configuration has been proven for several years now. Understand that dnsmasq will do a lot more than we have it configured for, but in this state its only ProxyDHCP.