Posts made by Kevin

I have made a wiki page for this, [url]http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Switching_to_gpxelinux_on_Ubuntu_FOG_server[/url]

I’d like to be able to post some of my changes i’ve made to FOG on Wiki as well as posting instructions for Ubuntu users (I noticed a lot of tutorials are done on Fedora). Thanks.

I have it working with HTTP, I just ran it through tftp that time so it would stay on the screen long enough for me to take the screenshot. Everything is working as it should minus that window above

Also, I just found this thread, it could answer some questions, [url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/unable-to-reach-default-fog-web-page.104/[/url]

Well, it should probably be asked as to what OS you are running this on. I’ve learned, personally, after all my FOG re-installs, I just leave the MySQL password alone. This could be different for you, but i’m the only person with any credentials on the server itself, so I don’t worry much about the password. But depending on what OS you’re using, it could make a difference. Also @at808, are you sure 192.168.1.1 is your FOG server? I guess i’m just used to that being the router on a home network.

The guide helped a lot. Thank you for it. Since I use Ubuntu, things were in different places, but I was able to get it figured out. I can post the changes here if you’d like. I was able to image some VM’s and boot ISO’s with it, so i’m pretty happy. The one thing i’m not sure of though is that when I select an item to boot, whether is be an image or an ISO, the screen doesn’t clear. So I can still see the background and the items loading on the bottom. This could be because of it being in a VM, but i’m not sure. Any ideas? I loaded it via TFTP this time so I could take the screenshot, but it started doing this when it boot with the gpxelinux. I mean, an easy work around would be to make the screen all black, but curious as to why that’s happening.[IMG]http://i1066.photobucket.com/albums/u416/kgaudio2/FOG_zps3de63507.jpg[/IMG]

Madison, WI

you need to go to [url]http://yourserver/fog/management[/url]. if that doesn’t work, since it’s a new install, I would try to install it again since that would probably be a bad apache install.

So i’ve seen people post switching their servers over to gpxelinux for faster boot times, and using http instead of tftp. I now am running into a situation where we might need to use a tftp server at work for other programs, and our FOG server might be going away. From what i’ve read, you can use gpxelinux to boot over http instead of tftp. However, from when i’ve played with it, i’ve never actually been able to boot anything with gpxelinux. I get either vesamenu.32 errors, or that a URL syntax has been detected, and just fails. So i’m here to see if someone could write up a how to on how to switch FOG over to gpxe completely instead of regular pxe. I know people say it’s as easy as replacing pxelinux with gpxelinux, and some config changes, but I have yet to see anything work. Any write up would be appreciated!

You might want to look into this.

[quote=“Bjorn Jentoft, post: 2149, member: 587”]It’s a known fact that tftp is not the fastest protocol out there. Bigger files transfer much better on http. If you exchange [B]pxelinux.0[/B] with [B]gpxelinux.0[/B], http is supported. This will decrease loading time of ISO files substantially.

Your pxelinux.cfg/default would then contain something like this

LABEL winstall32
MENU LABEL Install Windows (all 32-bit)
LINUX memdisk
INITRD [url]http://myfogserver/iso/LiteTouchPE_x86.iso[/url]
APPEND iso raw

or

LABEL winpe
MENU LABEL WinPE
LINUX memdisk
INITRD [url]http://myfogserver/iso/mywinpe.iso[/url]
APPEND iso raw

Good luck, Bjorn[/quote]

the gpxelinux.0 can be grabbed from SYSlinux, [url]https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/[/url]

In the BIOS, for some reason, it may not be selected under the boot menu. I’m going off of memory, so bare with me here. But, you first need to enable PXE booting in the BIOS (which i’m sure you know about) BUT you also need to click a check box under the boot priority (like 2 menu options up) to enable the NIC at the pre-boot screen when you PXE boot the machine. Have you checked to make sure both items are set correctly in the BIOS?

That’s weird, i’ve imaged close to 100 7010’s with no problems what so ever, and i’m pretty sure we are using the same NIC chipset that you are. Being that this is a new model however, have you updated the Kernel? I know we are running Kernel 3.6.9 without any problems. I would try updating the kernel and see what happens.

if you go with the ‘without the bypass’ method, every machine you want to image will first need to be in the FOG database. If you run SCCM, or other similar software, you can export a list of every machine on your network and import it into FOG. But in order to push an image to a machine without the bypass, it first needs to be registered in FOG.

‘with the bypass’ you really only need your machines with the image registered in FOG. At least I do it this way so I don’t accidentally upload an image instead of pushing one down. It has some other advantages as well, but won’t go into great detail. However, as an example, I have only 3 machines registered in our FOG server for images to upload. 2 laptop models and a desktop. With those 3 machines, and running the bypass, I can push an image to any of our 9,000 machines from the PXE menu.

WITHOUT THE BYPASS:

1. Do a quick host registration (registers the MAC address as the PC name in FOG, and sets Image ID and OS ID)
   1a. Do a full host registration (allows you to enter all information manually)
   note Step 1 needs to be done on every machine
2. Log into FOG web server, select the machine in the host tab, select basic task, upload image
3. to image - log into the web server, select the machine in the host tab, select basic task, deploy image. Reboot the selected machine, PXE boot, and it’ll image
   3a. Once a machine is registered, you can do a quick image, put in a username/password, and it’ll start to image that way.

WITH THE BYPASS:

1. you must do step 2 from above at least with 1 machine with the image you want to install on the other machines.
2. PXE boot your machine and select the image from the PXE menu. You don’t have to register the machine prior to imaging, it’ll push whatever image you selected to that machine.

You should be able to use the Bypass and set up a multicast deployment without registering MAC addresses, more details can be found here:

[url]http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bypass_Host_Registration[/url]

Just note that this is unsupported, but works well. I just finished a .32 version of the bypass last night and tested all throughout the day today and works very well. Just follow the Multicast Deployment steps at the bottom of the page.

Just a thought, and I have not tried this personally, but [URL=‘http://ipxe.org/’]ipxe[/URL] might work.

[quote=“Matthew Hood, post: 8958, member: 353”]I also have a Raid 5 with 6 drives but they are older drives, I would be in a lot of trouble if something happened and we lost data. We have over 30 images which as you know is a lot of man hours to recreate them. I know there is a backup script that comes with the previous versions of FOG is there one for .32?[/quote]

Maybe this would work, I modified the backup scripts a while ago, but YMMV

[url]http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3449766&group_id=201099&atid=976201[/url]

Filezilla can be your friend

If anyone is interested, I’ve got a “beta” .32 Bypass Host file setup that will allow you to image a machine right from the PXE menu, based on the .32 version of FOG, upgraded from .29. I can post this on the sourceforge site if there is enough interest for it. I’m still calling this a “beta” as even though all the CHKDSK lines have been removed from the file, the machines still run it. However, i’ve re-imaged a lot of VM’s and all have worked so far running my updated version of the bypass.

If you are running it on ESXi, go to your web browser and goto the IP address of your ESXi server. On the right hand side, you can “Browse datastores in this host’s inventory” which is an option on the right side of the screen. Once you authenticate to the server, you can browse the datastore and backup your VM.

OR

if you have the vshpere client installed. You can browse your datastore from within the program and download the VM to an external drive with the datastore manager.