Posts made by pberberian

@joe-schmitt Looking at that repo, it appears I will need to generate a new buildroot config and update the build.sh script to have a aarch64 option. Is that the jist of it? I will probably have to create a customized docker image that is either arm64 based or can cross compile.

Thank you all again for the help!

@george1421 Thank you so much! We will get working on this. We would love to be able to add full arm64 support to FOG

@tom-elliott (I work with Sbergeron) We have cross compiled ipxe, and the arm host can successfully chainload to ipxe. ipxe runs the default.ipxe script and from there tries to grab the bzImage32 kernel. The problem is that the bzImage kernels provided are built for x86 / x86_64. We would be happy to work with you in cross compiling these kernels so that there is a kernel and initrd image that works on arm.

There is also the issue of being able to dynamically detect for arm hosts. From preliminary testing, this seems to be a good solution (at the beginning of default.ipxe):

Before:

cpuid --ext 29 && set arch x86_64 || set arch i386

After:

cpuid --ext 29 && set arch x86_64 || set arch ${buildarch}

So, if the cpu does not support x86_64 instructions, we use the buildarch which will either be i386 or arm64. Although, I am ultimately not sure if this is needed. Our DHCP server tells the arm host to boot from the arm-compiled ipxe image, and we can configure fog to make the host to boot from an arm specific kernel once we build one.

Many thanks!

@sebastian-roth The host fails to boot at all with those files. It must chainload to ipxe first before it can boot (because of HPE’s crap pxe implementation).
I am using an intel addin card that gives 4x10G SFP interfaces

@tom-elliott
I did some more digging.
I can access the iPXE command line by pressing escape at the FOG boot menu. Here’s what I did:

• ping <fog_server_ip> --> Works fine, perfectly fast
• imgfetch http://<fog_server>/fog/service/ipxe/init.xz --> Very very slow, manually cancelled
• ping <fog_server_ip> --> times out. If I try to ping from the fog server, we have the ~5s latency again

So this definitely seems to be an issue with the networking stack of the iPXE image. It just runs incredibly slow once you try to start a file download, even if the download is cancelled. Any idea how to fix this?

@tom-elliott I actually go through 3 switches, with STP configured properly and everything.
I know the network topology is good because everything works perfectly when the host is booted in linux

@tom-elliott I am running FOG 1.4.4

The hp server grabs ipxe.pxe from the FOG server and boots from there

@pberberian
After more investigation, the network latency seems to be directly proportional to how many network interfaces are connected. With all six, there are ~5 seconds of latency. With half of them plugged in, it is closer to three seconds. With only the one plugged in, it is still at 800ms, which is faster for sure but still much slower than the .1ms I get when booted in Linux.

Why does the number of connected interfaces affect the latency?

Hello all,
I am having incredibly slow network speeds when a host is trying to get the kernel and init.xz from the fog server (ie, when it needs to be imaged / captured, when I select “Host information”, etc).
The two files, roughly 25MB, take a minute or two to transfer.
I believe the cause of the low throughput is high latency - pings from the FOG server to the host take 5-15 seconds. TCP is very slow over high latency networks.
So here’s what is making this confusing for me:

• I have used this FOG server with multiple other hosts, virtual and baremetal without this issue
• This very high latency only occurs when trying to grab those two files. For example, if I select “Host Information”, grabbing the kernel and init image takes ages, but once I am booted into the host information thing, I can ping the fog server with <.5s latency. Same thing if I am booted from disk. The latency of the host goes up 10x only when at the fog splash screen and trying to grab files from fog
• The file transfer speeds up significantly if I unplug the other network interfaces. This is an HPE server, with add-in cards that give us a total of 14 network interfaces, 6 of which are utilized. If I unplug everything but the single interface used to PXE boot, the transfer speed goes way up (still not as fast as our 10Gb network would allow, but still fast).

So its not an issue with the FOG server or the network. And somehow having other network interfaces with link makes it all go much slower.

Thank you all for any help

@wayne-workman Thank you. Yes, I will get to this sometime today or tomorrow

@wayne-workman Adding new options on your end would be great. Thank you for the quick reply

Hi! First, I just want to say FOG is a fantastic project and I really appreciate everyone’s work.

I have begun using the fog api to automate some tasks, and it would be incredibly useful for me if I could add more information to images. In particular, I would like to

1. be able to add my own value in the “operating system” field (ie ubuntu, RHEL, suse rather than just ‘Linux’)
2. be able to add “tags” to images that lets me quickly filter and manage images from the api

Let me know what you guys think