Hi Tom,

are you using efibootmgr in FOG?

I was testing using partclone manually restoring an image and it wouldn’t boot. I was able to boot a linux live cd, and using efibootmgr repair the boot menu manually.

As far as I am aware, the only way to fix non bootable UEFI from windows tools is BCEDIT, however seeing as you boot a linux kernel to apply the image using partclone, maye you can script efibootmgr afterwards to repair the UEFI on the system and make it bootable.

Or is it a different issue entirely with FOG?

efibootmgr should be scriptable

usage: efibootmgr [options]
-a | --active sets bootnum active
-A | --inactive sets bootnum inactive
-b | --bootnum XXXX modify BootXXXX (hex)
-B | --delete-bootnum delete bootnum (hex)
-c | --create create new variable bootnum and add to bootorder
-d | --disk disk (defaults to /dev/sda) containing loader
-e | --edd [1|3|-1] force EDD 1.0 or 3.0 creation variables, or guess
-E | --device num EDD 1.0 device number (defaults to 0x80)
-g | --gpt force disk w/ invalid PMBR to be treated as GPT
-H | --acpi_hid XXXX set the ACPI HID (used with -i)
-i | --iface name create a netboot entry for the named interface
-l | --loader name (defaults to \elilo.efi)
-L | --label label Boot manager display label (defaults to “Linux”)
-n | --bootnext XXXX set BootNext to XXXX (hex)
-N | --delete-bootnext delete BootNext
-o | --bootorder XXXX,YYYY,ZZZZ,… explicitly set BootOrder (hex)
-O | --delete-bootorder delete BootOrder
-p | --part part (defaults to 1) containing loader
-q | --quiet be quiet
–test filename don’t write to NVRAM, write to filename
-t | --timeout seconds Boot manager timeout
-T | --delete-timeout delete Timeout value
-u | --unicode | --UCS-2 pass extra args as UCS-2 (default is ASCII)
-U | --acpi_uid XXXX set the ACPI UID (used with -i)
-v | --verbose print additional information
-V | --version return version and exit
-w | --write-signature write unique sig to MBR if needed

Typical usage:

1. Root can use it to display the current Boot Manager settings.
   [root@localhost ~]# efibootmgr
   BootCurrent: 0004
   BootNext: 0003
   BootOrder: 0004,0000,0001,0002,0003
   Timeout: 30 seconds
   Boot0000* Diskette Drive(device:0)
   Boot0001* CD-ROM Drive(device:FF)
   Boot0002* Hard Drive(Device:80)/HD(Part1,Sig00112233)
   Boot0003* PXE Boot: MAC(00D0B7C15D91)
   Boot0004* Linux

This shows:
BootCurrent - the boot entry used to start the currently running
system.

BootOrder - the boot order as would appear in the boot manager. The
boot manager tries to boot the first active entry on this list. If
unsuccessful, it tries the next entry, and so on.

BootNext - the boot entry which is scheduled to be run on next boot.
This superceeds BootOrder for one boot only, and is deleted by the
boot manager after first use. This allows you to change the next boot
behavior without changing BootOrder.

Timeout - the time in seconds between when the boot manager appears
on the screen until when it automatically chooses the startup value
from BootNext or BootOrder.

Five boot entries (0000 - 0004), the active/inactive flag (* means
active), and the name displayed on the screen.

2. An OS installer would call ‘efibootmgr -c’. This assumes that
   /boot/efi is your EFI System Partition, and is mounted at /dev/sda1.
   This creates a new boot option, called “Linux”, and puts it at the top
   of the boot order list. Options may be passed to modify the
   default behavior. The default OS Loader is elilo.efi.

3. A system administrator wants to change the boot order. She would
   call ‘efibootmgr -o 3,4’ to specify PXE boot first, then Linux
   boot.

4. A system administrator wants to change the boot order for the next
   boot only. She would call ‘efibootmgr -n 4’ to specify that the
   Linux entry be taken on next boot.

5. A system administrator wants to delete the Linux boot option from
   the menu. ‘efibootmgr -b 4 -B’ deletes entry 4 and removes it
   from BootOrder.

6. A system administrator wants to create a boot option to network
   boot (PXE). Unfortunately, this requires knowing a little more
   information about your system than can be easily found by
   efibootmgr, so you’ve got to pass additional information - the ACPI
   HID and UID values. These can generally be found by using the EFI
   Boot Manager (in the EFI environment) to create a network boot
   entry, then using efibootmgr to print it verbosely. Here’s one example:

   Boot003* Acpi(PNP0A03,0)/PCI(5|0)/Mac(00D0B7F9F510)
   ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(0,5)MAC(00d0b7f9f510,0)

   In this case, the ACPI HID is “0A0341d0” and the UID is “0”.
   For the zx2000 gigE, the HID is “222F” and the UID is “500”.
   For the rx2000 gigE, the HID is “0002” and the UID is “100”.
   You create the boot entry with:
   ‘efibootmgr -c -i eth0 -H 222F -U 500 -L netboot’

Hi there,

from what I understand from your post you want FOG to be able to get the MAC address of the IPMI interface and add it to the inventory.

From what I know about the supermicro IPMI would not be possible without integrating some form of IPMI driver into the linux kernel FOG boots to gather this inventory.

The actual machine doesn’t see the IPMI as a network card as such, only a device in device manager (if it was windows)

When the kernel boots and gathers its inventory you might be able to get some information from dmidecode once said driver is installed but I imagine it would be limited information as its meant to go the other way ie get information about the system while logged in via IPMI interface, not the other way which could also be a security risk.

let us know how you get on as I have thought about this same issue with HP iLO before and could be handy to have a link to the IPMI/iLO from inside FOG inventory

Great news Tom, appreciate the hard work!

time for testing windows 8 64bit

Great work Tom, iPXE is certainly the way to go for future.

Only one thing I would ask and this relates to the previous way of doing it.

I use the old 01-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX method and manually create some of those files for use by Thin Clients (that boot across the network and are diskless) and ESXi AutoDeploy hosts

Would it be possible using iPXE to still achieve this?

I imagine it would be a feature request, however it would require the ability to create a permanent task for a specific MAC address or group of MAC addresses with custom parameters.

Completely agree with you on the AD part, that’s the best drawcard to the Windows Agent!

However,

Since the computer naming component is no longer done via the Windows Agent in 0.33b as far as I know its done during the init image process.

Joining the domain could then be done as part of sysprep (as the name would already be right by this stage) thus making that part a moot point.

The only issue from then on, in order to rename the PC, a re-image would be required in FOG, unlike the windows agent which would just rename it, although then a domain re-join is required. How often does this scenario happen though? just re-image it!

Pretty sure OCS/FusionInventory has no such capabilities, it’s just for detailed inventory and software deployment

I was referring to someone making a TurnKey Linux Patch

Fair enough but, I agree on a .deb / .rpm but would also require package maintainers.

Maybe the current approach of install via script is still the correct path for now and allows maximum flexibility.

On a slightly different topic, what are you guys thoughts on the Windows Agent?

What if, FOG server was made to be compatible with the Fusion Inventory Agent instead, and change the entire SFX deployment over to the Fusion/OCS deployment method.

Pros are you already have people developing this agent seperately, once the initial headache of making FOG compatible is over then the devs can focus on other areas and not the Agent.

The biggest benefit is the improved inventory capabilities, rather then with the current FOG where you are required to boot linux to gather inventory, fusion/ocs will be collecting updated inventory all the time.

The downsides are from what I can tell fusion doesn’t install printers like FOG does (does anyone actually use this and not GPO?)

all other portions of the FOG agent can then be replaced with fusion inventory.

/ot Anyone know if Fusion Inventory can display toast notifications in windows 8?

thoughts?

I wasn’t referring to starting from scratch and creating an entire OS eg Ubuntu or over complicating in that manner.

Using something like TKL or others as a base would ease compatibility and includes both deployment options (ISO and VM Appliance), rather than having to test and get FOG to work on SUSE, Ubuntu, CentOS etc

standardize on one base, and ship it as a complete ISO or VM app

or take the approach from other embedded distro’s like FreeNAS or pfSense choose one underlying rock solid base (FreeBSD) and allow easy upgrades including the entire OS via the web UI. This option would also make it easier for commercial support, as its one OS under the hood to support.

My 2 cents.

[LIST]
[]Could FOG become its own distribution? Maybe even a TurnKey Linux patch or similar to ease packaging
[LIST]
[]Could ease compatibility, as everything is tested together before shipped as an ISO or VM image
[]being based on a modern Ubuntu LTS means better hardware compatibility for Bare metal install’s (who does this nowadays?)
[]Don’t think installing on windows is a good idea at all personally, I have always treated FOG like an appliance, it just works!
[/LIST]
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]Without starting a programming language flame war
[LIST]
[]As for changing over from PHP I personally agree with this, although there are a lot of PHP dev’s out there, I would choose a more popular language though. I find Python (Django) really easy to work with and might make for quicker dev time
[/LIST]
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]UEFI
[LIST]
[]I know its tricky, particular to get secure boot working, unfortunately I can’t help with this one
[/LIST]
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]As for all the extras like password reset etc
[LIST]
[]Get rid of them. Because FOG includes a PXE server its very easy to use Memdisk to boot any ISO you want, so no need to Integrate that extra work into the FOG kernel, let 3rd party apps do it, I have a PXE menu of over 100 ISO tools atm
[/LIST]
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]I would love to see improvements in FOG’s scale ability
[LIST]
[]Multi-Site improvements and site replication built in with no mods
[]Make it modular in Roles, when you do the install you choose what you want on that server, small sites deploy one single server all roles, large sites scale as they see fit
[]Option to Split Snap-In deployment separate from Image deployment in the roles
[]some form of load balancing / HA , like DNS SRV or Round Robin - easier than clustering
[/LIST]
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]KISS approach
[LIST]
[]let FOG focus on what its great at, Image and Snap-In deployment leave the rest for 3rd party tools
[/LIST]
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[]Commercial Support
[LIST]
[*]might be dreaming, but I know that we rely on FOG so much that having support would be great, and ease managements mind on how much we rely on this thing. haven’t installed windows manually for years!
[/LIST]
[/LIST]

Just to add to the Windows 8 support, if the FOG Agent could use the toast notifications, that would be neat.

Ideally if you could customise the colour, background of the notifications somehow from within the FOG web interface would be really swell

perhaps, you pick your settings, FOG web interface drops a configuration file and each agent syncs this file from the server similar to how you update the dll’s

[url]http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/Toast-notifications-sample-52eeba29/sourcecode?fileId=51008&pathId=2114880492[/url]

interested yes, could you add the following to the desktop client

1. Deploy a single snapin to a single PCs
2. Deploy a single snapin to a group of PCs
3. Deploy all snapins linked to a single PCs
4. deploy all snapins linked to a group of PCs
5. FOG Tray client that works better with Windows 7/8 and displays messages
6. FOG Tray client which you can send messages to to popup eg during an SFX is I want to display a message rather then use vbscript etc popup a nice message using the same FOG Tray balloon the agent uses.