@WT_101 As I mentioned, FOG doesn’t support imaging over wifi. The first roadblock that you will hit is iPXE because it needs the drivers and then your wifi settings to connect to. The second issue you will have is with FOS Linux, none of the wifi drivers are added into the kernel, nor is any of the wifi utilities compiled into the initrd file system. You would be better served with a usb ethernet adapter.

@louis-tasse said in Using FOG without PXE - FOG client on USB key:

Our organization will not provide its DHCP server to serve our FOG PXE server and thus must rely on a FOG client on a USB key.

is it that your organization provides dhcp services but you can not change its settings? If yes, are your fog pxe clients and fog server on the same subnet? If yes then we can use dnsmask to supply pxe boot info.

I can also give you a starter image for your usb booting if you need it.

@WT_101 please explain what hardware you are trying to pxe boot on. Does it have more than 1 network interface? There is something unique with the hardware where the built in uefi snp driver is not initializing the boot nic.FWIW neither ipxe or fos linux is configured to init wifi adapters. FOG doesn’t support imaging over wifi. While its technically possible FOS Linux doesn’t load wifi networks.

@RusinovAA

1.) When preparing Windows 10 for cloning (for capturing an image using FOG), is there a need to run and apply the Sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown utility. Or FOG, when capturing an image, performs procedures for decoupling Pts from binding to equipment and resets the OS identifier?
Sysprep (system preparation) prepares a Windows client or Windows Server for imaging. Sysprep can remove computer-specific information from a Windows installation (aggregate) so that it can be installed on different computers.

FOG does not react with the target system OS. It is Microsoft’s best practice to sysprep your golden image before image capture. I can tell you from experience if you want to make a neutral image that can be deployed to any hardware you should sysprep the golden image. If you capture from a Dell 5430 laptop and then restore to another Dell 5340 laptop you can image this way without sysprep. Understand that just because it works doesn’t mean this is the best choice. For me always sysprep the image if going to the same hardware or not. That way (for my campus) I have 1 golden image for 12 different hardware platforms both laptop and desktops. I install the required drivers using a FOG post install script, but that is a different discussion.

Quick answer, must sysprep? Yes to different hardware between golden image and target computer. Imaging between the same hardware you should sysprep but I’ve seen people no sysprep cloning and it works.

2.) Does the current version of FOG have the ability to automatically add computers running Ubuntu Server / Ubuntu Desktop to the Active Directory domain when distributing an image?

Quick answer is no, fog will not do this. A bit longer answer is that you can do this when ubuntu boots, and make a bash script to add the computer to AD.

@kamburta The basic steps are here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images

You will just need to get the right kernel parameters for booting ubuntu live. If you have a live boot CD you can get the parameters from either grub.cfg for the isolinux.cfg files. The steps for live boot are very close to the steps to boot the installer its just the kernel parameters that need to be adjusted.

@mmw_canada lspci and lsusb is already built into the FOS Linux image. You should only need to patch fog.auto.reg if you need extra stuff. There is no need to unpack and repack init.xz unless you really want you. I have a tutorial on dynamically patching the init.xz file here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14278/creating-custom-hostname-default-for-fog-man-reg

@gafferwiles When you use a NAS as a storage node there are a few things that happens.

FOS Linux (the OS that runs on the target computer) loads the image from the target computer onto the storage node (FOG or NAS) using NFS. The files are uploaded using NFS to /images/dev directory which is read write access. Now the user ID and password comes into play. The management user ID and password is used because the FOS Linux OS connects to the storage node using FTP to move the raw data files from /images/dev/<mac_address> to /images<image_name> directory. So you need to make sure the management user ID and password has rights on the NAS to login via FTP and can execute the mv command to move the files.

@RogerBrownTDL First of all, when you delete an image from the list of images (without opening the image definition first) it only removes the image from the database but leaves the raw files on the fog server’s hard drive. From the developers, this is by design. If you open the image definition and delete the image from the buttons inside the image definition it will also purge the raw files from the fog server.

So what to do now?

You will have to manually delete the image file directories using the fog server’s linux command prompt. They are all located in /images on the fog server.

So if you follow the following steps

1. Open a linux command shell on your fog server
2. Change to the ./images directory
   cd /images
3. Get a directory listing of directories in the /images directory.
   ls -la
4. Identify the old image directories based on the directory name and ones you know you deleted. I’m going to give you a command that will purge all files in a directory, be careful with the command line because with great power comes great responsibility. The -rf flag means delete any directories below the path given and the other once forces a delete without a warning prompt.
   sudo rm -rf /images/<image_name>

There is another command you can run like df -h that will show you the disk partitions with used and free space. You should see the / or /images partition free up as you delete files.

@rivaldydwi I can’t help you with snapins since I don’t use them, but windows itself has a spot to place a batch file that will run just after OOBE/WinSetup and before the first login prompt is displayed.

For this auto execution of the batch file to work you must sysprep your image. If you use sysprep them you can create a batch file called setupcomplete.cmd and place it in a special location. If windows finds that batch file in that location it will run it. Google “windows setupcomplete.cmd” and it will give you directions where to save the file and its exact naming requirements.

The second place you can use if your commands need to have an active desktop is in the unattend.xml file. You can configure the unattend.xml file to auto login as an administrator account, X number of times. There is a section in the the unattend.xml file for firsts run actions. You can have it run 20 different commands if you want. Typically I will set the auto login count to 1 and then the last step in the first run section is to run “shutdown -r -t 0” to reboot the computer.

I know its not what you are looking for with the snapins, but this is an alternate “windows” way to go about it.

@mardonis200 If you get to the fog ipxe menu, then dnsmasq has done its job. Once at the fog ipxe menu dnsmasq is out of the picture. Selecting a menu item will have iPXE transfer bzImage and init.xz. Do you see this transfer or just the flashing cursor?

What computer is causing this problem? Is it just a specific model or all models?

@mardonis200 This all looks good. What seems to be the problem? Is there a specific error you see?

This message is just a notify message: Failed to set DNS configuration: Link lo is loopback device.

@Can-eh-dian11 Where I’ve seen this kernel panic is just after the kernel boots it tries to connect to the initrd file (virtual hard drive VFS: in the error message). This is the init.xz file that gets transferred after bzImage to the target computer. Almost all selections on the iPXE Boot menu calls bzImage and init.xz

Lets see if you manually download the intits from here: https://github.com/FOGProject/fos/releases

Its init.xz and it goes into /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe directory. Rename the original one first then download this new one. Again its called init.xz

From the linux command prompt you could run these commands.

md5sum /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/init.xz
and
md5sum /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/init.xz.old

to see if the files are exactly the same.

@pingonicechap

1. What specifically do you have configured on your dhcp server for dhcp options 66 and 67?
2. What device is your dhcp server for the network you want to pxe boot on? (Manufacturer and model)

@terrigan OK now we have something else to check. Once again I’ll say that something strange is going on with this P620.

Now that we know the fog server is on a different subnet, lets run a few more commands.

1. Do you have a device on the target computer’s subnet you can ping?
2. Lets once again go into the shell console of iPXE. Lets run the following command
   dhcp && route
   That should display the message about getting dhcp address again and then it will print the route and gateway info it gets from dhcp. Is the gateway info valid. If your network allows it can you ping the gateway address?

@george1421 said in Lenovo P620:

Is the fog server on the same subnet as the lenovo?

I’m not sure I saw an answer to this. Is the pxe booting computer on the same subnet as the FOG server?

@ITRecords for right now lets execute these two commands.

Pause that for one second: Lets make sure the /images is still mounted on /dev/sdb1. Check the df -h command if /dev/sdb1 is still mounted over /images then continue on.

Rerun the fog installer, that should fix the permissions on the directory. I would rather have the fog installer script fix things than brute force a permission on everything.

IF that doesn’t work then run these commands:

lets make sure the files are owned by fogproject.

chown -R fogproject.fogproject /images
chmod -R 775 /images

That should reset the permissions…

@AxeMeAQuestion22 use this article to resync the fogproject password. Its typically not advised to manually change the fogproject password, but as you see sometimes there is a requirement

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/11203/resyncing-fog-s-service-account-password?_=1682368252750

@chambie on the fog server linux console key in: file /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage that will tell you what version of the kernel is installed.

@jfenner said in Changing Server IP in VirtualBox?:

I’ll check with our admins, but our environment is fairly rigid.

If you can’t run a second network, then there should be only two places outside of the web ui that you need to update.

1. a hidden file /opt/fog/.fogsettings and /tftpboot/default.ipxe
2. Inside the web ui FOG Configuration->FOG Settings and hit the expand all button. Search for the old IP address and replace it with the new. Press the save button in each section where you find the replaced IP address
3. Then in Storage Nodes -> Default storage node there is an ip address in there.

Once those three have been changed and then rebooted it should work on an isolated network. Its best to rerun the fog installer script but it should work without it as long as if you change the IP address in those locations.

@jfenner It can be a usb ethernet adapter too. It just needs to exist log enough to get FOG installed. When you reinstall FOG it will ask which is the imaging interface, just give it the forever nic card name.