Best posts made by Psycholiquid

Mine is a little thicker, I have integrated the FOG service to turn it on and start it (Doesn’t do so well in my VM to have it on). As you can see I am using a typical naming that FOG will rename before adding it to the domain. There are two accounts that are setup also. Copying the default admin accounts allow for easier user setup in the long run also.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
    <settings pass="specialize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <WindowsFeatures>
                <ShowMediaCenter>false</ShowMediaCenter>
                <ShowWindowsMail>false</ShowWindowsMail>
            </WindowsFeatures>
            <BluetoothTaskbarIconEnabled>false</BluetoothTaskbarIconEnabled>
            <ComputerName>CIN-RENAME</ComputerName>
            <CopyProfile>true</CopyProfile>
            <ProductKey>tisk-tisk</ProductKey>
            <RegisteredOrganization>Sheakley Group</RegisteredOrganization>
            <RegisteredOwner>Sheakley Group</RegisteredOwner>
            <TimeZone>Eastern Standard Time</TimeZone>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <RunSynchronous>
                <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <Description>Enable Administrator Account</Description>
                    <Order>1</Order>
                    <Path>net user administrator /active:yes</Path>
                </RunSynchronousCommand>
            </RunSynchronous>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-IE-InternetExplorer" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <BlockPopups>no</BlockPopups>
            <CompanyName>Sheakley Group</CompanyName>
            <Home_Page>http://intranet/SheakleyIntranet/</Home_Page>
            <DisableFirstRunWizard>true</DisableFirstRunWizard>
        </component>
        <component name="Networking-MPSSVC-Svc" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <DomainProfile_EnableFirewall>false</DomainProfile_EnableFirewall>
            <PrivateProfile_EnableFirewall>false</PrivateProfile_EnableFirewall>
            <PublicProfile_EnableFirewall>false</PublicProfile_EnableFirewall>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="oobeSystem">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <OOBE>
                <HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
                <NetworkLocation>Work</NetworkLocation>
                <ProtectYourPC>1</ProtectYourPC>
                <SkipMachineOOBE>true</SkipMachineOOBE>
                <SkipUserOOBE>true</SkipUserOOBE>
                <HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>true</HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>
            </OOBE>
            <UserAccounts>
                <AdministratorPassword>
                    <Value>Look-Away</Value>
                    <PlainText>false</PlainText>
                </AdministratorPassword>
            </UserAccounts>
            <RegisteredOrganization>Sheakley Group</RegisteredOrganization>
            <RegisteredOwner>Sheakley</RegisteredOwner>
            <TimeZone>Eastern Standard Time</TimeZone>
            <AutoLogon>
                <Password>
                    <Value>Look-Away</Value>
                    <PlainText>false</PlainText>
                </Password>
                <Enabled>true</Enabled>
                <LogonCount>3</LogonCount>
                <Username>Administrator</Username>
            </AutoLogon>
            <FirstLogonCommands>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>del /Q /F c:\windows\system32\sysprep\unattend.xml</CommandLine>
                    <Order>1</Order>
                    <Description>Deletes unattend.xml</Description>
                    <RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>del /Q /F c:\windows\Panther\unattend.xml</CommandLine>
                    <Description>Deletes unattend.xml</Description>
                    <Order>2</Order>
                    <RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>sc config FOGService start= auto</CommandLine>
                    <Description>Changes FOG server to Automatic</Description>
                    <Order>3</Order>
                    <RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>net start FOGService</CommandLine>
                    <Description>Starts FOG service </Description>
                    <Order>4</Order>
                    <RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
                </SynchronousCommand>
            </FirstLogonCommands>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <InputLocale>en-US</InputLocale>
            <SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale>
            <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
            <UserLocale>en-US</UserLocale>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="generalize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <SkipRearm>1</SkipRearm>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim:e:/sources/install.wim#Windows 7 PROFESSIONAL" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />
</unattend>```

I move the machine over to another hosts in a new blade-center (Was in a crappy Dell 1U server host before) Problem ceased to exist. I also upgraded to the SVN latest and it seems to be working pretty good;

@george1421 I most definitely will.

@george1421 If this does work FOG needs to start selling USB flashdrive and USB to Ethernet packages for support money LOL.

Who has two thumbs and cant read when tired?

This guy!

OK huge update.

I worked today to learn MDT (Not that bad at all) and got it all setup and the image done. With @george1421 and @Wayne-Workman I got the dual EFI and BIOS booting going, I was able to capture and deploy windows 10 Enterprise. This is setup correctly for EFI and boots no problems. I am going to build off of this now and see where I can get it. Hopefully I can document, I always say I am going to but never do because work gets the better of me.

So this is exactly what I did:

Setup VM with EFI firmware
Loaded windows and it picked up on the EFI drive and partitioned it as a GTP drive with the EFI partition.
Started the MDT sysprep and shut it down.
Changed the firmware over to BIOS on teh VM.
Captured the image
Set PC to deploy and ran it (The screen was stuck on init.xz but it was imaging)
IT rebooted after imaging and I have a Windows 10 Screen and it is Enterprise.

I have been testing quietly for some time now and the NIC to get is the StarTech USB21000S2 . Every machine I have thrown at it seem to either PXE boot just fine or UEFI boot. I haven’t gone as far as to test the FOG client yet to see all machines are working but for most it seems to work.

IT seems the SMSC - LAN7500 is about as generic as you can get and it widely used compared to all others. Hell it is even supported under Novell.

I looked around and didnt find the answer so I did teh troubleshooting myself. Figured I would post it here for the Wiki if you guys wanted to add it:

Using VMXNET3 ethernet adapter (Also works with E1000 and others)

Wireshark results from BOOTP filtering:

Vendor Class Setup:

Scope Policy Setup:

OK ok ok , I am an idiot… (go ahead take the stab)

So i forgot I have load balanced / failover DHCP in my environment. SO even if the fog server is set to one DHCP server it will still be pushed to the other in case of high utilization… (damn it me!!!)

So I was able to get it working more granular down to the UNDI. With what @george1421 said this could be a problem later but I am thinking it will be fine for now as the versions will probably only go up from here for change dramatically. So here is the setup for clairity.

DHCP (Windows Server 2012 R2) 'Failover is on your to configure"

Set Vendor Class for hardware. (You can get this from Wireshark easily if you run it on the DHCP server and set ip.src == IP of client PC)

Cant really copy and paste but here you go anyway: PXEClient:Arch:00007:UNDI:003016

Then goto Policies for either your whole server or for your scope depending on how your network is setup:

Make a new Policy, name it and description.

Add Condition:

Set Options:

Now if you refresh your Scope Options you will see the new options:

I have tested and this works specifically for the Surface Pro 4s with the dock. I am not sure about the dongle yet because I don’t have one.But I will see about getting one.

@george1421 said in Coexistence of UEFI and Legacy - Troubleshooting help:

@psycholiquid This is a bit off topic, but I see in your snapshot of “Here is a screenshot of my setup” you are using the ipxe7156.efi. I just saw a pull request on git hub that the “7156” flavor of kernels were being removed from the FOG distribution because the latest ipxe.efi version (in 1.5.0 branch) is now working with the surface pros.

1. Just be aware that this kernel is being removed from the package and you will need to update your dhcp setup.
2. You probabaly should confirm that the latest version of ipxe.efi (pulled from the working branch) does what YOU need it to because ipxe7156.efi was left in the distribution to address an issue with the surface pros and not VMWare.

I’m not saying its a problem. I’m only trying to raise awareness that there was a change and based on your configuration you may have issues.

I know I was part of the testing process for the whole thing.

@george1421 Yeah I was coming to the first conclusion on my own after reading through a bit of this blog:

http://www.johnwillis.com/2014/03/pxe-booting-using-usb-to-ethernet-dongle.html

Yep it was the .mntcheck file causing the issue. Removed and now I can upload from any PC to the image without issue. Thanks guys for helping me out with all this

OK just got done re-imaging the same machine 7 times in a row with all good results. Thank you guys so very much for helping me out with this.

I will take a look at this once I get it settled in the environment. The way I got around it for now was to create the SetupComplete.CMD file and put what I needed in there so it would start the FOG service once imaging was complete and it is working good now.

I’m not a coder so it all looks like Greek to me but I know I can figure out what I am looking at. And thank you for the suggestion.

@Wayne-Workman said:

@Psycholiquid So what’s the correct format? A quick google search yeilded this: http://serverfault.com/questions/666754/ppaondrej-php5-5-6-on-ubuntu

I wasn’t trying to be a smart ass when I posted that I was just copying what outputted to my screen.

I tried the URL you suggested and get the following:```

root@CINDSV10011:/home/ladmin# locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX
root@CINDSV10011:/home/ladmin# locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
Generating locales...
  en_US.UTF-8... up-to-date
Generation complete.
root@CINDSV10011:/home/ladmin# export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
root@CINDSV10011:/home/ladmin# dd-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php5-5.6
No command 'dd-apt-repository' found, did you mean:
 Command 'add-apt-repository' from package 'software-properties-common' (main)
dd-apt-repository: command not found
root@CINDSV10011:/home/ladmin# add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php5-5.6
Cannot add PPA: 'ppa:ondrej/php5-5.6'.
Please check that the PPA name or format is correct.
root@CINDSV10011:/home/ladmin# LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php5-5.6
Cannot add PPA: 'ppa:ondrej/php5-5.6'.
Please check that the PPA name or format is correct.
root@CINDSV10011:/home/ladmin# locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX

@Tom Elliot was able to find the issue.

Apprently the time was off.

added ntp server and updated and now everything works as intended,

Yep upgrade worked like a champ. So in short all it needed on my end was the upgrade and update. But adding the code wouldn’t be a bad idea as most of us wouldn’t think it that far through. Still not sure what happened with NTP.

@Tom Elliot @Wayne Workman @ch3i

Actually I was talking about Replication Service or Apache2 or anything really related to FOG in a button format. I know how to install Webmin and throw commands but for some that is a bit daunting, I just envision a button that throws the command for them but also outputs to the screen not interactive but kinda like Exchange does when you setup a user or group or whatnot. Making it more of a learning tool. Teaching while empowering. So when you tell someone for instance to restart Apache and they come back with how? You can point them to this page / button and they will be able to and also see the command in case they want to learn more.

Example:

Simple instructions on how to setup a multi-site FOG environment with one database for better data handling. This will be a work in progress so please bear with me as I write this. I will remove this line once complete. This guide will be using trunk not release. So if you are uncomfortable with the extra steps please be aware things can go wrong and should not be used if you are dependent upon everything working all the time.

Hardware / software used:

ESXi Server
VM with 1 CPU, 1 GB of memory, and 2 HDDs (One for the OS and one for the Images)((This is a personal preference))
Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS 64bit

Prep information needed:

(These settings can be obtained from a network admin if you are not currently that person)
IP address used for the server
Netmask
Gateway
DNS addresses (Always good to have more than one if possible)(Will need in order to resolve hosts names later)

Installing Linux OS

Start by choosing your OS that will be used for your FOG environment. For this guide we will be using Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS. This will be installed without a GUI for a smaller footprint and better utilization of the server.

Download the ISO. Either burn the ISO to disk or mount the ISO in your VM. Once mounted and VM is turned on run through the install process.

Setting up network during install will help you later so setup the network for static if given the option (Basically either unplug the network card physically or disconnect your network connection on your VM. Choose to setup your network manually. (Personal preference, if you are comfortable with using DHCP for a server by all means do so.) Setup your IP, netmask, gateway and DNS make sure you have this information readily available for later.

Fill out your hostname (Name of the server). Fill out Domain name, This will be the name of your domain unless you dont have one.

Example: domain.net or domain.local

Now for user setup, this will be your admin user. There has been some confusion on what to name the user. This can be any name you want, however you can not use fog as a username. This is reserved for the fog software and should be avoided as to not cause problems in the future. a good login would could be one of the following but is only a suggestion not a template to work off of.

Usernames:
ladmin
fogadmin
admin
god
ITGod
Jeepsrock
Thisisenoughofusernames (See what I did there LOL)

So setup your username in the following order:

Name of user (Generic name)
Account login (actual login name)
Password (Shhhh its a secret)

Encrypting your home directory. I am personally not in the business of caring whether or not it is encrypted due to my network being segmented and secure. However if you are in doubt encrypt. Better to be safe than sorry.

Now set your timezone (EST/GMT/CST/PST).

Disk setup and partitioning

For ease of use in this document we will be using “Guided - use entire disk and setup LVM”. The reasoning for this is in case we want to resize the disk later. It is much easier to deal with if you go ahead and setup LVM in the first place rather than mess with gparted or other forms of partitioning. Choose your disk setup for the OS (In my case the 16 gig Disk) and leave the other disk alone for now.

You will be asked to write changes to the disk and configure LVM. Choose Yes. Use the whole volume for the partitioning. Then choose to write changes to disk at the end. The install will begin running other scripts and installing needed software. Near the end of the install you will be asked for proxy information. Enter proxy if you have one. If there is no proxy hit enter for blank. More install actions will take place and you will be presented to choose how updates are applied. Choose one and press enter.

Once everything is installed and setup in its most basic form you will be ask if you would like to install other features. For ease of use I choose OpenSSH server for ease of use later. It will allow you to connect to your server via SSH using putty or other such software which will take place later in this guide. So for the purposes of this guide choose Open SSH server and press enter.

Important Note Do not choose and other options in this screen unless you know what you are doing. Some of these options can cause issues with the FOG install later.

Lastly you will be asked to "Install GRUB Bootloader into MBR. Allow this and the install will finish up. Remove the CD from the drive or disconnect the Drive from the VM and press enter to reboot into the installed OS.

(Further editing coming…)

@Wayne-Workman I think I will go the route of recreating and allow the DB to do the deleting to make it cleaner , but I am getting more schooling on how everything is working. I am glad you all are here to push me along, now back to my setup post to help others.