Best posts made by JJ Fullmer

@nehsa I finally figured out scheduled tasks via the api.
I have it written out with a powershell example (with verbose output so you can see the POST url used and the json data) in post
https://forums.fogproject.org/post/139328

Give that a looksee and let me know if you want more examples. Also in that Thread @Tom-Elliott explained what some of the needed fields for a scheduled or crontask do.

@mecsr Have you run test disk on the vm your uploading that image from that gave you that message?

Still unsure why uploading an image would cause a cpu halt

@csuther3 Are you copying from a profile that already has cortana broken? Because it doesn’t fix it in that manner. You have to start with a fresh standard windows profile, then customize it.

@chris-whiteley Sorry for the insanely delayed reply.
So you’re looking to find a host by the serial number? And then get the last time it was imaged?
I was coming here to post information on my recent update, but this sounded useful so I went ahead and implemented getting a foghost by the serialnumber in the inventory field and even a get-lastimagetime function that will default to prompting you to scan a serial number barcode
These will be published shortly.

-JJ

@Sebastian-Roth The variables you don’t recognize are part of post installation scripts, I haven’t modified any php classes.

I will see if I can get that output on monday, we’ve now deployed all of our surface go 1’s back to their users but I can probably nab one for a few minutes if I get in early enough.

I can also try a different ipxe boot file for good measure. I use ipxe.efi maybe snponly.efi will load things differently and yield different results

@plegrand A couple questions
What are the specs (cpu(s) model and speed, Ram speed and size, virtual/physical) of your FOG server?
What are the specs of the workstations (specifically the slowest one)?
What is the compression rating on the image you’re pushing?

Something to understand about multicast (and someone should correct me if I’m wrong) is that is does all the decompression on the server and then sends the packets out following multicast protocol. The idea of multicast is to do more on the server side and less on the client and get a constant speed. It also is meant to prevent using a file or part of a file that is in use to make a fail safe against corrupting files and such. The downside is that if you’re using an image with a compression level of 9 and your server isn’t all that powerful, multi-cast is going to slow down a lot compared to unicast where decompression is done on the client.

My point is if your server has less power or less optimization for decompressing then your clients, multicast will just be slower. Considering your speed difference of multicast and unicast, my guess would be this is the case.

Also, a side note in favor of just using unicast, I have used fog to deploy to a lab of 40 computers (10 at a time, which can be changed with the Max clients setting in the storage configuration, just fyi) with the same image on unicast and had no problems with corruption and the speed was glorious.

Another limiting factor is client and server port speeds. If your server is on a 10/100Mb port, you should upgrade that because it will make your life painful. But if your server is on a Gigabit switch then 10 clients on 100Mb switches will all run at around 1.7 GB/min (estimated mathematically and based on experience) If everything is on gigabit switches/ports then you might see a decrease in client speed as you add more simultaneous clients , but will still be around 2 or 3 times faster for 10 clients. Just to give you a little reference off the top of my head.

It would probably be a good idea to start recording average speeds for common configurations and post them in the forum somewhere so people have a reference of how fast to configuration ought to be performing.

@Wayne-Workman said in Cortana/Windows Search breaks in default profile:

@Arrowhead-IT can you make a git repo with your two scripts in it, with a read me and a GNU GPLv3 license?

I made the repo where they will go.

I was trying to decide whether I wanted to make one repo or a bunch for a few other fog-snapin/image prep type scripts.
For now it’s just the one repo. I’d prefer it to be in the fog-project group of repos, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ll link to the fog-project repos for sure though.

https://github.com/darksidemilk/Create-and-Deploy-Windows-Default-Profiles

@JJ-Fullmer
A new version has been published!

Release notes here:

https://github.com/darksidemilk/FogApi/releases/tag/2303.5.26

@mosi Are you saying you recreated the problem on a VM with 3 nics or the problem doesn’t happen in that case?
Also, are all nics connected to the network? Are they in a nic team/bond/aggregate link? Connected to different subnets? only 1 connected?

EDIT: I tested this in a VM and recreated the problem. It didn’t matter if 1 or all adapters were connected, if 3+ exist on an unregistered host it behaves as @mosi describes.

UPDATE: I also tried some previous bzImage and init versions, all the same behavior.

Updated to ver 6525 before updating the image again.
This time around it worked flawlessly as it should.

@Wayne-Workman said in Cortana/Windows Search breaks in default profile:

@Quazz That definitely needs integrated into the script.

I believe it already is integrated in the script. The only .dat files it should copy are the ntuser.dat files. But I could be wrong on that one.
I’m still planning on some serious work on this to make it only edit the ntuser.dat hive for each setting stored there instead of copying the whole thing. But I have a lot of other projects that have to take priority at the moment. I will make a note to add in an explicit exclude in the copy for the UsrClass.dat just to be safe.

A minor update has been released

Release notes: https://github.com/darksidemilk/FogApi/releases/tag/2303.5.33
PSgallery Listing: https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/FogApi/2302.5.33

@Sebastian-Roth Just an FYI, I ran into this again on different hardware. An HP Z2 G4 Workstation did the same thing.
There may have been more to it though, still troubleshooting a bit. My failsafe in the postdownload script to have it still join the domain through the unattend file was injected into the file, but the computer did not join the domain through that method, there may have been a different reason for that though.

Point being, there could be other hardware that weirdly doesn’t get all the variables. I sadly can’t super test on this hardware as I discovered it when imaging a production machine that I can’t take out of production for testing. But I can probably find a chance to get the fos level device info or something.

Needed to not use root as msqluser for storage node.
Set it back to fogstorage with password from the fog webgui fog config →fog settings → storage node settings (something like that)
Put that in the storage node servers /opt/fog/.fogsettings and redid the install again. All is well again

@Arrowhead-IT Of course since it is in github now, anyone is welcome to help with commits and contributions

@rmishra1004 is this happening on all hosts or just this one? Have you tried hitting the ‘reset host encryption keys’ on the host in the webgui?
If you copy past the url that fails, what happens? I believe you should see an error message like this

{"error":"im"}

when going to it in a browser

A minor bugfix update has been released…and then something more was caught (aliases for functions weren’t being exported) and another version was released right after

Release notes: https://github.com/darksidemilk/FogApi/releases/tag/2310.6.3
PSGallery: https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/FogApi/2310.6.3

@Jbob You’d think I would have tried that since I suggested it to this guy, but I have not tried that because I am dumb.

I am trying using the mapped letters from when I mount the shares.

I also just discovered how to run a command prompt as the system user via psexec (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/77528/how-do-you-run-cmd-exe-under-the-local-system-account)

So I’m using that method to test whether or not it should work via the fog service.

@Ceregon I’ve never messed with cloning a raid array. Anything can be done, but whether or not it’s going to work with built-in stuff is a different question.
I imagine you have vroc/vmd enabled in the bios on the machine where you’re deploying already. I’ve never got to play with Vroc but I’m familiar with it, just wasn’t able to convince management to buy me the stuff to try it a few years back.
My first guess is that /dev/md124 doesn’t exist because the raid volume doesn’t exist yet, but it sounds like you found that in a debug session on a host you’re trying to deploy too. So that’s probably out. But I just wonder if the VROC volume needs to be created beforehand to be deployed to, but I don’t have a full understanding of when that volume is made.

My next guess would be that a RAID array is a multiple disk system, so the image needs to be captured in multiple disk mode
Are you having different disk sizes for these RAID volumes? would capturing with multiple disk or dd be an option?
In theory a RAID is a single volume, and you may be able to capture it correctly and it sounds like you’ve found others in the forum that have done that?

Other possibility is the need for different VROC drivers in the bzImage kernel, but I feel like if that was the case, then you wouldn’t be able to see the disk at all when capturing.

You could also capture in debug mode and mount the windows drive before starting the capture to see if you can read stuff?
This is from part of a postdownload script that will mount the windows disk to the path /ntfs

. /usr/share/fog/lib/funcs.sh
mkdir -p /ntfs
getHardDisk
getPartitions $hd
for part in $parts; do
    umount /ntfs >/dev/null 2>&1
    fsTypeSetting "$part"
    case $fstype in
        ntfs)
            dots "Testing partition $part"
            ntfs-3g -o force,rw $part /ntfs
            ntfsstatus="$?"
            if [[ ! $ntfsstatus -eq 0 ]]; then
                echo "Skipped"
                continue
            fi
            if [[ ! -d /ntfs/windows && ! -d /ntfs/Windows && ! -d /ntfs/WINDOWS ]]; then
                echo "Not found"
                umount /ntfs >/dev/null 2>&1
                continue
            fi
            echo "Success"
            break
            ;;
        *)
            echo " * Partition $part not NTFS filesystem"
            ;;
    esac
done
if [[ ! $ntfsstatus -eq 0 ]]; then
    echo "Failed"
    debugPause
    handleError "Failed to mount $part ($0)\n    Args: $*"
fi
echo "Done"

Also, hot tip, once you’re in debug mode, you can run passwd and set a root password for that debug session. Then run ifconfig to get the ip. Then you can ssh into your debug session with ssh root@ip then put in the password you set when prompted. Then you can copy and paste this stuff and it’s a lot easier to copy the output or take screenshots.

Another possibilty could be using pre and post download scripts to fix the raid volume in the linux side, I found this information https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/memory-and-storage/linux-intel-vroc-userguide-333915.pdf but I didn’t dig into to that too much.