Best posts made by Junkhacker

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/a727a8/fog_appreciation_post/

@Jbob said:

Tom is just … Tom.

that’s like saying: Superman is just … Superman.

trunk 7609? is there a reason you upgraded to a release that’s almost 2 months old? i think this has been fixed already.

@wanderson fog 0.32 was released in 2011. i’m afraid none of us know how to support it. it may be time to upgrade or migrate to a new install of fog. there have been far more than enough improvements to be worth it. your existing images will be compatible with the latest version of fog (as legacy images. if you migrate to a new server instead of upgrading a few setting will need to be set to recognize them properly, but they will work)

don’t forget to get the proper licensing. you can’t capture an OEM image and redeploy it to other computers and be in compliance with Microsoft’s licensing. you’ll need a volume license.
once you have an imaging server, you’ll find yourself using it a lot more than you think. user has a virus? a few hours to repair, or a few minutes to reimage, etc.

@VincentJ default compression level is 6. testing found that it had the best compression/performance ratio for us. i don’t think many people change it.

@Junkhacker to clarify, your new “default” menu item would contain something like this:

iseq ${serial} <labSerial1> &&  goto chainboot ||
iseq ${serial} <labSerial2> &&  goto chainboot ||
goto fog.local

:chainboot
set net0/next-server <otherPXEbootServerIP> && set filename <whateverFile> && chain 
tftp://<otherPXEbootServerIP>/<whateverFile> ||
exit

@dwagner sounds like you need to recreate the /images/dev/postinitscripts directory, and it’s contents, a single file named “fog.postinit” with the contents

#!/bin/bash
## This file serves as a starting point to call your custom pre-imaging/post init loading scripts.
## <SCRIPTNAME> should be changed to the script you're planning to use.
## Syntax of post init scripts are
#. ${postinitpath}<SCRIPTNAME>

permissions 777
also, you’ll need to create an empty file named “.mntcheck” in /images/dev too, if you haven’t

@george1421 this one? https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/9396/stopping-web-service-failed/8?page=1

ok, here are my pseudo scientific results:

pigz vs pzstd (parallel implementation of zstandard, experimental)
tests were performed using a windows 7 image
(larger of 2 partitions only)
uncompressed image file size:34650439624

(de)compression tests were performed as closely as i could to emulate fog’s operation methods (without doing too much work :P). files were cat-ed from a mounted nfs share and piped into the programs, with results saved to an SSD. test machine was running Lubuntu instead of a custom FOS init, because i’m lazy.

pigz -6 compression
duration: 6:06
file size: 17548659028

pigz -6 decompression
duration: 6:00

pzstd default (3?) compression
duration: 5:16
file size: 16967988207

pzstd decompression default compression file
duration: 3:17

pzstd -6 compression
duration: 6:11
file size: 16247155611

pzstd decompression -6 compression file
duration: 3:16

pzstd -9 compression
duration: 10:00
file size: 16084180231

pzstd decompression -9 compression file
duration: 3:21

Edited to add zst compression level 6

@george1421 said in OS Support - the numbers are in:

Finally on my campus we are slowly moving away form Centos to Debian as the platform of choice for new installs of linux.

Just wanted to chime in that my campus is almost exclusively Debian as well. except fog, because i installed it on Ubuntu when i was just getting started, and because Ubuntu is for beginners*.

Personally i have preferred Debian over CentOS because of the incredibly stable Enterprise Linux that is RHEL/CentOS has always been so slow to get performance/feature enhancements.
I prefer Debian over Ubuntu because it doesn’t break things as often changing things for the sake of change, lol.

*(joking, obviously. mostly.)

since we’re sharing…

i5 SSD client
zstd -11 compression

i did this once.
here’s what i had to do for the kernel arguments of the custom task

&& imgfree && initrd http://${fog-ip}/<path>/Win7PE_x64.ISO && chain memdisk iso raw ||

the default kernel name and arguments get passed by fog, then this says “when you’re done loading that kernel and init into memory, drop that kernel and init from memory, then load this ISO file into memory and boot from it”

@Jaymes-Driver said in Happy Valentine's Day:

love and joy are closed source projects!

i believe there was an attempt to make a free/open version in the 60’s, but it’s since been abandoned

@wattfun where in the process are you getting hung up? also, what Linux distro?

it’s worth mentioning that when moving files between linux and windows systems, file permissions are NOT preserved. just something to keep in mind

if you’d like my advice, here’s what it would be. just buy 1 server with SSDs in a raid 10 or raid 5. use zstd compression on your images set to a compression level of 11.

i honestly think you’ll get better performance out of a single fog server with a solid storage subsystem then 3 lower speced servers (not to mention you won’t be wasting the storage on redundant copies, allowing better cost benefit per GB)

@Qweeqweg the change from using an account named “fog” to an account named “fogproject” is recent. in spite of directions, people kept creating and using an account named “fog” as their user account when setting up the server.

very low priority.
user customizable ipxe menu text colors (the one’s currently set as static values in bootmenu.class.php)
maybe even a built in method for uploading a custom bg.png?

@quazz i can confirm the existence of this problem with 1.5.0-RC10 on Ubuntu 16.04.3-LTS. knowing the user (he’s a coworker) his server will be CentOS.