Posts made by Kevin

FOG .32 does not support the EXT4 filesystem. This will be added to FOG .33 which the RC1 of .33 should be released anytime now if the developers haven’t run into any big problems.

I will be able to chime in more later today. But, the long and short is yes, FOG will work just fine with your size company and everything that you want to do. Take a look at this posting I had with another user, and that can get you going on some things. [url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/looking-for-fog-institutions-nearby-minneapolis-st-paul.221/#post-864[/url]

Not unless they have a VPN setup on their router to connect to your place of employment.

This switch is what I currently use at home as my “core” switch:
[url]http://www.netgear.com/business/products/switches/smart-switches/smart-switches/GS108T-200.aspx[/url]

Then I run the following switches off of the “core” switch to the various rooms in my home and connect the devices up to those switches:
[url]http://www.netgear.com/business/products/switches/unmanaged-desktop-switches/GS105.aspx[/url]

Can you tell I have some networking geek in me?

I posted this “patch” for Ubuntu servers a while back and i’ve used it multiple times without any problems. Maybe you want to check the code in there to see if something isn’t quite right in the code that you have.

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

We currently image our 780’s with the hard drives set to ATA mode using the default kernel that .32 installed with and haven’t had any problems with uploading an image.

Are you multicasting or imaging using the unicast?

So i’m just thinking, is your FOG server setup to do DHCP, or did you set it up to point to your companies DHCP server? This can cause issues as well. Hopefully you have setup FOG to point to your companies DHCP server. If not, you’ll have to modify the DHCPD.conf file on the server a bit.

Trunking ports would make it go faster, however, the router/switch would need to support this. If you have an entry level D-link switch, more than likely it’s not supported. Is your switch a gigabit switch? If it’s not, that’ll be an easy upgrade to go and purchase a new one. If it is, and you would still like it to go faster, I would look into a business class switch that would need to support IEEE 802.3ad.

Personally, I use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS x64 Desktop Edition for all of my FOG servers. I chose this version because this version will be supported until April 2013 and won’t have any updates that will be a true upgrade to the OS (Gnome for example). I also chose this version because it’s easier for me to setup FOG rather than doing it all through command line. But you should choose what fits best for you. After the initial setup of FOG, you really won’t be working much on the Linux box after that. For instance, today I had to log onto one server that was up for 3 months to update VMware Tools on it and restart it. Prior to that 3 months, I never once had to actually connect to it and work on it. However, it’ll be up to you for the gear you want to use. At work we use all top of the line Cisco switches, and for home use, I use a Netgear smart switch for the “core” switch. Any router will get the job done or a layer 3 device. It really comes down to what speed to you want to image your laptops at and how long you’re willing to wait for the deployment. However, if you plan on doing up to 10 at a time, I would strongly recommend looking into a gigabit device. If I could throw in my two sense, i’d look into something like this if it fits your budget,

[url]http://www.netgear.com/business/products/switches/smart-switches/smart-switches/GS716T-200.aspx[/url]

This switch will run you a little over 200 bucks, but you’ll have a lot of flexibility with the configuration that you won’t get from stuff of the shelf at any retail store. It can also be used as a switch where you can just plug stuff in and let it go. Plus you’ll get a lifetime warranty with that device. Hope this helps.

If it’s just for testing, could you get a cheap linksys router to use? A router might be the best bet to get. We can do imaging on switches, but we are using layer 3 switches, so they can do routing.

Time to fire up DCCU and see if that fixes the issue

Hi and welcome to the forums. Are you sure that you’ll be using a Hub? I’ve never tried using FOG with one so I don’t know about the results. However, if you are on an isolated network, FOG will work just fine. Just make sure that when you are setting it up that you chose to have FOG act as your DHCP server. That way, when the clients boot to it, FOG will deal with handing out the IP’s to the clients. Let us know if you have any more questions or run into problems.

Kevin

I think it’s actually a BIOS issue, i’ve seen some 780’s restart everytime, and others never do. I’m still working on figuring out what the difference of them are.

WOL I want to say works off of IPhelpers which shouldn’t be affected by pxelinux.0 However, If you know for a fact that your Windows server has the correct settings for ports 66 and 67, I would assume there are three possibilities left. 1. Your DHCP server is on a different subnet than your lab. 2. You’re running a Linux DHCP server as well which you would need to add the code that I previously posted. Or 3. Somewhere, a firewall could be blocking those ports. I would have the server/network guys double check the servers/firewall.

First I would go here and download the latest syslinux file, [url]https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/[/url]

Once you open the archive, copy the memdisk file to /fog/images/memdisk where the original file sits on the fog server. Below is an example of my home config file for using ubcd. This file (for Ubuntu) is located at /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default.

LABEL Ultimate Boot CD 5.1.1
kernel fog/images/memdisk
append iso initrd=/fog/images/ubcd511.iso
MENU LABEL Ultimate Boot CD 5.1.1
TEXT HELP
Lots o’ tools
ENDTEXT

Did you modify your DHCP settings (ports 66 and 67) on the server?

Given the information that you have provided, there are some good things and some bad. FOG shouldn’t have any problem imaging the Dell/HP computers. I am unsure about the MPC/OmniTech systems though. However, as long as they are 2000/XP/Vista/7 or Linux, they shouldn’t be a problem. The issue that you will run into are the Apple computers. FOG natively can’t image Apple computers, but there is a work around. I know this works as we currently have this implemented on our system, you can follow the directions from here, [url]http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_get_Macintosh’s_Netboot_working_with_your_FOG_server[/url], to be able to image Apple computers. The long and short of that site is that you need to have a working DeployStudio server setup on a Mac server, and then FOG will point to that server for the images.

I’ve never tried imaging a computer that is a dual boot, so someone else might have to chime in on that. I do know that FOG supports multiple partitions, but it might be possible to copy the drives using the “Raw Image” function which copies the drive on a “sector to sector”. Also, given that you have several computer labs, you should be able to take advantage of multicasting though FOG, if you’re networking gear supports it.

It’s good to hear that a good majority of your computers are Windows 7 though as FOG handles these without much issue, however, i’d suggest that you read up on imaging, as it takes a little extra work to get a working image other than a regular sysprep. I’d suggest reading over this document, [url]http://blog.ibuddy.info/index.php/2011/05/fog-29-my-windows-7-guide-3264-bit-docv1/[/url]

Hope this info helps a bit.

Kevin

Ah, but SCCM does but that’s a whole other discussion right there.

I’ve been successful booting iso’s from the FOG menu. And can give you some pointers.

[B]kernel fog/Hirens88/memdisk [/B]
[B]append iso initrd=fog/Hirens88/USHiren88.iso raw[/B]
[B]MENU LABEL US Patched Hiren’s Boot CD V8.8[/B]

is currently what you have. Did you move a copy of memdisk into your Hirens88 folder? What I normally do is just point it to the default memdisk that’s created when you install FOG. Or you could also go out and download the newest version. However, I would try taking the raw out of the second line. It’s not really needed now unless it doesn’t boot without it. The iso’s i’ve ran don’t need the raw at the end of the append. I can also tell you that more than likely, your XP recovery console is getting the BSOD due to the fact that there aren’t the correct SATA drivers being loaded. You’ll need to make a custom disk with a program like this, [url]http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html[/url], and include the SATA drivers for your machines in order for that to work. Hope this helps.[B][/B]