@Wayne-Workman
Well it’s not technically a fog issue, but it is an imaging issue and I figured that my fellow image making peers might have some thoughts. I would love to see your documentation on that process

So I am working on a new windows 10 image and I’m making my default profile.
My method involves making a new profile with a name like “loading” (Because the name of the copied profile pops up briefly while a new user logs in the first time) and then customizing a profile to my heart’s content. Customizing things like desktop background, taskbar pins, adding a start menu toolbar with an organized programs menu. Making a customized start menu pin layout and various other things like bookmarks in browsers and such.

Once customized I go to regedit and navigate to hklm/software/microsoft/windowsNT/currentVersion/ProfileList
Then I edit the value of the default profile path to the path of the customized user.
Then I sign out and sign into an administrator account
Then I go to win+x then Y to get to the system properties and click the advanced settings button on the left.
I go to user profiles and select the default profile and hit “copy to”
I make sure “everyone” is permitted to use and then copy it to the C:\Users\Default.
Then I put the registry value of default profile path back to its default.
Then I copy a careful selection of files from the appdata/local folder of the customized profile to C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local
I haven’t fully documented what does and doesn’t break things in there, but it takes great care. But if I don’t do that I lose things like win+x or right clicking the start menu.

This method is actually easier than it sounds and I have had more success with it than with sysprep. Plus you can just copy your working default profile folder to a network drive to fix things later. This has worked for windows 7 and 8 and almost for 10.

Here’s the problem now.
On the original profile I copy from the cortana/start menu search is all configured and works as it should. But any new profile I make the search button/cortana button just does nothing. If you start typing with the start menu up, nothing. It is still possible to search if you open the search application from the shortcut here “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs” but nothing else brings up the search in the easy way that it should.

I’m still trying a few things and I’m sorry if that is more information than you needed. But I figured there was a chance to someone else out there is having this problem or maybe has been successful with a different method of making default profiles.

Please and thank you

Maybe try the commands Tom suggested again? I did them out of order on accident since I was having the same problem and it worked for me.

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge
sudo rm -rf /etc/php5
sudo rm -rf /etc/apt-get/sources.d/*ondrej*
sudo apt-get purge php5*
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

Then I reran the installer and all was well with the world. Maybe trying it again is worth a shot

@Jbob oh sorry, that was kind of vague.
It starts and all that but it doesn’t seem to do anything when I set the client to a task on the server.
This could be just me and I need to test more though.

@Jbob said:

@Arrowhead-IT what issues are you experiencing with including the client in the image? Its actually safer / more secure to install the client into the image rather than after imaging completes.

The client just plain doesn’t work when I include it in the image. Maybe I’m missing something, and I’m still doing testing. This is a new setup. At my old job I used to always include it in the image, but it had sporadic success rates too. I find that a fresh install always seems to work. Also, I love that I can install the client and it adds itself if the client isn’t already in fog. I figured that functionality meant that I should install it individually.

Although I imagine you figured this out by now, I also wanted to do this and found this post. I figured this is as good a spot as any to post it.
I’ve noticed that the service works better when it’s installed on each computer after imaging rather than trying to include it as part of an image.
So the idea of this script is to download the latest version and install it silently right after imaging, so I would suggest adding it as a snapin that you put on all clients. The only change you should need to make is changing the fogip variable to your fog server ip.

@ECHO off
set fogip=192.168.100.100
echo "downloading latest client..."
powershell -Command "wget http://%fogip%/fog.client/download.php?newclient -OutFile C:\FOGService.msi;"
echo "installing client..."
msiexec /i C:\FOGService.msi /quiet WEBADDRESS=%fogip%
echo "starting service..."
net start FOGService
echo "Done!"
exit

@kbramhall said:

@Arrowhead-IT As we’re troubleshooting I’m thinking it is definitely something with our internal networking configuration. The DNS servers we are using include google’s 4.2.2.2 and an internal DNS server.

Isn’t google dns server 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 ?
And if you’re using public dns’s maybe try opendns and see if that makes a difference
208.67.220.220 and 208.67.222.222

When you say internal network config, do you mean at the network infrastructure level or with the FOG server OS?
If you think its the local network, do you have any other cent OS boxes, and if so are they able to install the packages?

@kbramhall said:

@Tom-Elliott Hey Tom, we are not dead set to use 1.2.0 we just figured we’d download the latest from the FOG project website

Welcome to Fog, where if Tom were to release every stable release of the development branch it would be worse than Ccleaner updates.
1.2.0 was the last time something was labeled stable. I use the trunk in production and rarely have any issues, and you get new features all the time! And if there ever is a problem it’s fixed in a snap. Only issue with your configuration and the trunk is that you wouldn’t have internet, so you wouldn’t be able to install and updates. Which overall would be fine, I’m one of the crazies on the bit torrent sync to the source files because I can’t wait the 20 seconds it takes Tom to hit the commit button.

Anyway to install the trunk you’ll need git, svn, or btsync. Git is probably the easiest, svn is on sourceforge.net and they’ve gone down like 5 times in the last 3 months. There’s instructions on the wiki here https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Upgrade_to_trunk

@kbramhall said:

@Tom-Elliott I attempted to go through the installer and saying no to DHCP and DNS but if failed to install tftp-server this time. Attached is the foginstall.log file.0_1450298881023_foginstall.log

I took a look at the install log and noticed this bit

../lib/redhat/functions.sh: line 1: n#: command not found

I’ve seen that before. You need to both make sure that you’re running as the root user and make sure you’re running the install script from the bin folder.
i.e. cd into where you downloaded/untarred the fog installer and then

cd bin
./installfog.sh

I figured out when making the automated update scripts that you can’t run it with the full path like
/home/fog/installFoder/bin/installfog.sh
because it use the trailing … to get to some included scripts. So you have to start the script from its happy home.

Also, what happens when you try to install the packages that failed manually?
I would try them one at a time. It looks like these ones…

yum install tftp-server
yum install xinetd
yum install vsftpd
yum install gcc
yum install gcc-c++
yum install lftp

And I just had another thought, are you sure the firewall is completely disabled? I just remembered a recent experience where a fresh install cent OS wouldn’t do internet things until I flushed the iptables.
Which if memory serves is

iptables -F
or
iptables -f

Hopefully something there helps

@Wayne-Workman said:

@Arrowhead-IT said:

Just so you know. The reason I chose not to use DHCP with FOG is because I had the mistaken assumption that FOG would automatically manage it in some way, or that the gui would have some control over it. It does not, you’ll be doing a bunch of manual configuration.

I guess now is as good a time as ever to say I’m working on an add-on that does just this.

@Wayne-Workman ooooh! I like that idea!

@kbramhall Considering that you only just set this up, maybe it’s worth trying a different distro. I’ve had better experiences with ubuntu server and fog then cent OS. But I am more familiar with debian so I might be biased.
But maybe it’s an issue with the OS install.
What happens when you run

yum update

?
If that doesn’t seem to connect to anything, then
What does your resolv.conf say?

cat /etc/resolv.conf

Might be a dns server thing. That’s sometimes the issue when you can’t seem to install a package

@george1421 said:

ok then lets confirm a few things.

You want FOG to be the dhcp server for your subnet?

Just so you know. The reason I chose not to use DHCP with FOG is because I had the mistaken assumption that FOG would automatically manage it in some way, or that the gui would have some control over it. It does not, you’ll be doing a bunch of manual configuration. It added some small configuration and did get it passing out ip addresses, which may be enough for you. But just be aware that you’ll likely have to do some more manual configuration of the DHCP. Not that that is all that hard nor undocumented on the internet, just wanted to make sure you’re aware.

@kbramhall
I’m not 100% sure if the package is the same in redhat as it is in debian, but in debian its
sudo apt-get isc-dhcp-server

so maybe try

yum install isc-dhcp-server

I’ve had a problem where it wasn’t installing the dhcp package on debian too on a test DHCP style install a couple weeks ago and installing the package manually fixed the problem for me. But then I ended up not using the DHCP on fog.

what dhcp package are you trying to install with yum?
And, since you’re new to the install, are you sure you want DHCP on the FOG server? Do you not already have a dhcp server on your network?

@Tom-Elliott said:

32 bit Init: https://mastacontrola.com/init_32.xz
64 bit Init: https://mastacontrola.com/init.xz

Just in case someone else is reading this and having the same problem and is new to fog and ipxe and what not…
To test out this fix do this…

cd /var/www/fog/service/ipxe
sudo mv init.xz init.bck
sudo mv init_32.xz init_32.bck
wget https://mastacontrola.com/init.xz --no-check-certificate && wget https://mastacontrola.com/init_32.xz --no-check-certificate
sudo chmod -R 775 ./

@Tom-Elliott is on top of this problem
Check out this forum post https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6315/hp-z640-nvme-pci-e-drive/37
I’m posting my results of testing on the /dev/nvme0n1 type drives with his current inits found here

32 bit Init: https://mastacontrola.com/init_32.xz
64 bit Init: https://mastacontrola.com/init.xz

To use them do the following

cd /var/www/fog/service/ipxe
sudo mv init.xz init.bck
sudo mv init_32.xz init_32.bck
wget https://mastacontrola.com/init.xz --no-check-certificate && wget https://mastacontrola.com/init_32.xz --no-check-certificate
sudo chmod -R 775 ./

Granted by the time dell gets you a replacement it might already be tested enough and the fix will just be in the latest trunk. But that’s what to do in case anyone else is looking.

@Tom-Elliott
Ok I will test every which way just for funzies and report back by editing this post

I won’t test the multiple disk images because I only have one disk in there right now. But I can add in a drive that would get recognized as /dev/sda and make sure it can image that combination if you want.

Download
Single Partition/Resizable - Working!
Multiple Partition/Single Disk - Working!
Multiple Partition/Multiple Disk - Working!

Upload
Single Partition/Resizable - Working! - a few error messages that don’t stop anything
Multiple Partition/Single Disk - Working!
Multiple Partition/Multiple Disk - Working!

@Tom-Elliott
Sorry that it took me so long, I kept getting distracted by some other stuff.
It’s Alive!
It Works!
Amazing!
You’re the best!

• I updated to the latest btsync (5750) (which seems to be newer than the latest git of 5748)
• Downloaded your inits from mastacontrola
• I also took out the host primary disk specification in the gui for gits and shiggles
• I tested download with the already existing single partition resizable base image.
• It worked perfectly!

I did a debug deploy so I can also confirm that all the variables are now correct…

Shall I test a resizable and a not so unresizable upload?

I’m guessing that you did a uefi image since it wants to use windows boot manager, which I believe is window’s uefi method.
Was secure boot enabled on the computer that you uploaded from, could that cause a problem? I haven’t actually done any successful uefi imaging and haven’t really tried that hard because I’m personally yet to see why it’s worth it when mbr/bios/legacy works so well and I don’t have any 3+TB drives in my windows workstations at work.

I have had success imaging windows 10 with legacy mode, just for a reference, I’m on the latest trunk, but I would bet 1.2 works with it.
Granted I don’t use sysprep, I find that it likes to kill off my default profile. So I just manually uninstall devices in the device manager before imaging. It’s trickier, and involves more work, but it’s done sooner than it takes sysprep to run. But I’m getting off topic.

Have you tried repairing the install with a win 10 disk. Auto repair. What ever the gpt/uefi equivalent of

bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr

is. (Fun fact shift+F10 gets you straight to a command line on a windows install disk instead of waiting to click through the menus)
Or try the windows automatic repair that works like 10% of the time.
You can also use diskpart to make sure the volume/disk/partition that got imaged is active.

disk part
select disk 0
list partition
select partition 1
detail partition

something like that, and then you can set it to active. That was a problem I used to have when I used the altiris imaging system, I’ve never had the problem with FOG.
Granted you shouldn’t have to repair the install after imaging, especially if you run sysprep all proper, but if you can make it work then that might narrow down some possibilities.

Can you disable secure boot in the bios settings on the computer not booting?
Can you make sure secure boot was disabled on the computer you uploaded from, or if it was disabled try imaging with it enabled?
I’m just guessing on the secure boot thing, might not even be a thing, but it seems like it could be relevant.

I hate to suggest starting over on an image, but I would recommend making sure that you’re using bios/legacy/mbr boot mode. Unfortunately there is no way (that I have ever found anyway) to switch a computer between the two without reinstalling the OS because they use different partitioning types MBR and GPT. Also, when installing the OS in mbr mode, the easiest way I’ve found to ensure it’s a single disk (This hasn’t worked for uefi/gpt mode when I’ve tried) is to hit shift+f10 at the partition screen then do the following in the command line to clear the partitions and make only 1 full size partition

diskpart
list disk
# select your disk, usually disk 0 unless you have more
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
exit
exit

Hit refresh on the partition selection screen and viola. I got that from a forum post on here or related to fog somewhere many moons ago and have been using it forever.

I seem to be rambling again.
To sum up

• Figure out if you’re in uefi or legacy mode
• If you are in uefi mode, play with secure boot and try a repair disk
• If you can, remake the image in bios/legacy/mbr mode
• Hopefully something I said is helpful

@Wayne-Workman That makes me feel special Thanks