Posts made by londonfog

Hi There,

We have an interesting case where we almost entirely use ipmitool and sol activate to boot servers and pxe boot them, we currently use a pxe server contained in a docker container, but I’ve used fog previously and would like to try using it again, I think it might best fit our needs. But would need to make sure this fog menu would display on serial over lan (SOL) connections.

Hi There,
Trying to create an automated deployment of fog, and want to be able to do an api call to create our ipxe menu items, as we generally don’t use static images anymore, but most is from an ipxe menu, loading the iso, and autoinstalling. Which all of this we do from the ipxe menu. So I’m looking for how I could push these menu options out with an api call, if there is one.

Thanks

@george1421 Oddly enough, ALT-F1 - ALT-F4 is doing nothing, so I can’t switch to tty.

@george1421 Yes, same screen as above.

@george1421 I just updated and it looks like it’s a little better (it shows the kernel loading page, whereas before it went straight to starting syslogd"
But after the kernel loads it moves to the black screen, starting syslogd, etc… Then starting eno1, eno2, etc until it finds the active interface.

@george1421 Probably a stupid question, but will this need done on all of the servers(storage nodes) I’m assuming yes, just S instead of N.

@george1421 Oh really, interesting…

Yeah, I’m on the latest known release. What does the upgrade path look like for that? This is a brand new fog build, migrating from an existing host into a new location, but this behavior is the same on both old/new.

This from what I can tell is only affecting one of our models of systems we are pxe booting.

Supermicro
PXE Boots via UEFI, Boot to the fog menu, click deploy image, enter user/password and then I get the following screen after some time instead of being presented with the image selector screen

Has anyone seen this happen before? If I switch to legacy, it does get to the menu fine.

Thanks.

@george1421

1. No not every machine - Only the machines we have registered in FOG that we associate this “image”(ipxe menu item) to. Just like you can do currently with Associating an image to a host
2. Yes, all will be registered in FOG. Would like to do this with an API call.
3. There will be many, yesterday there were 20 done.
4. Yes, although I haven’t personally used php in years myself and other people on my team can do this. I started looking at the source code last night, but not too deep yet.
5. Motivated enough to make it work so we don’t have to adopt something else, since this primarily works for our other needs.

Is it possible to associate an iPXE menu item to a host like you can associate an image to a host?

Scenario:

I have multiple machines that all need the same image but I am not using static captured images I am using ipxe menus to boot an iso and run an automated installer from ubuntu, so there is zero interaction. Currently the only interaction is plugging in the machine and booting it to fog, selecting the menu item and letting it go.

I’d love to be able to associate mac addresses to a certain option so once it hits the fog menu it selects it and then runs in the installer. Does anyone have any idea how to make this a possibility?

Thanks!

@sebastian-roth

I am pxe booting ubuntu 20.04, kernel and initramfs are extracted from the iso (ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso)
and my menu code is as follows:

kernel http://$FOG-IP/os/test/casper/vmlinuz
initrd http://$FOG-IP/os/test/casper/initrd
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=1800000 ip=dhcp url=http://FOG-IP/os/20.04/ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso net.ifnames=0 autoinstall ds=nocloud-net;s=http://FOG-IP/os/20.04/ ro
boot || goto MENU

This works without fail on my other devices.

Hi There,

I have a Dell Precision 5750 that I’m trying to UEFI pxe boot - I can boot to the fog menu, select my ipxe menu item (which is a netboot for ubuntu) It loads that kernel and initrd fine and starts to try and wget the iso from my server, I can see busybox and initramfs messages “No Broadcast interfaces found - exiting” this repeats and then it’ll try to wget the iso from my server to which it says wget can’t connect to remote host, network unreachable. Attaching a picture

I have no issues pxe booting other devices, just this model. I assumed it was some bios changes I need to make, which I believe I’ve changed everything I can and would need to, It almost seems like it just doesn’t see my nic. Has anyone run into this issue before?

Thanks!

@george1421
So it would look like the following?

kernel http://{fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/vmlinuz
initrd http://{fog-ip}]/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/initrd

and as long as directory above is in /var/www (ubuntu server here) it will work? Or, do I need to have kernel and initrd actually in root dir of /var/www not in sub directories? And you’re right tftp transfer is fast if I’m on the same site, we have some machines that need to image from a remote site which do not have a local fog node.

Hi there, I’m curious if I can use http instead of tftp in my ipxe menu settings, here is an example of what one menu item looks like

kernel tftp://{fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://{fog-ip}]/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/initrd
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=1800000 ip=dhcp url=http://{fog-ip}/os/20.04/ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso net.ifnames=0 autoinstall ds=nocloud-net;s=http://{fog-ip}/os/20.04/server/ ro
boot || goto MENU

Am I able to use http in place of tftp? TFTP is just painfully slow. Thanks in advance!

@george1421 I’m using fog to netboot and run an autoinstall ubuntu 20.04(there may be better tools for this, but FOG is what we use, so I was trying to leverage it). But I actually found out a way to use selenium to screen scrape and use a hotkey to select the ipxe menu item to launch and essentially everything relatively autonomously. Reason for this is so a tech can ran a python script to configure a new server for that location and not have to manually do really anything other than plug it in.

Hi There,

I’m looking to automate PXE installs on headless servers in a datacenter. But I am not sure how I can automate selecting the image in the list - I am using ipxe menus and not a static captured image

Is there a way I can drop to a pxe shell via keystrokes to then chainload the server + proper image? Maybe I’m asking for too much…

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

@pacman366 This is great, thank you! I had some other projects to work on, so I hadn’t touched this in a while. Where did you get your vmlinuz and initrd files from? Did you extract from the iso?

@pacman366 this is pretty similar to how I’ve gotten it to “work” Have you tried setting up the autoinstall method? I just started to attempt this today, and no luck so far.