Best posts made by Taspharel

Hi iekozz.

There is an article here: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=ProxyDHCP_with_dnsmasq that describes how to use FOG if you cannot modify any settings on your internal systems.

It also includes information regarding UEFI which is supported by FOG.

Regarding the images: It is possible to make generic images for FOG. The simplest way is to make a windows image, then generalize it in audit mode. There is guides for this but in my experience its something you have to work through in order to get it to work the way you want it to. But there is quite a few good starting points, some of them on these forums as well.

If you copy all necessary drivers to the windows driver folder, the setup will extract only the necessary ones. This comes at the price of image size. There is also a way to store drivers on the fog server and extract the ones you need with a postinstall script. This is probably much better to do, but involves some extra work that I never came around to doing.

Why not use Powershell?

msg * /server:IP/Computername "Text here"

Should work fine … the display box is rather basic, the user can only click “Ok”.

In this case it would send a message to all users on the computer defined by the /server: value

You can add /v to display what the user did with the box and /w to wait for user input. With /TIME:seconds you can define how long the message ist displayed.

Same here, working with a clean Windows 10 1703 Professional Version, no such problems.

Just a wild guess: But with Windows 10 and its Meltdown and Spectre Patches there was a massive problem with Antivirus-Programs causing Bluescreens.

Just make sure that you dont have the Windows 10 Meltdown / Spectre Patches installed and an Antivirus that isnt compatible?

Thanks for staying on top of this, they never asked back, I guess they just accepted that thats something we needed.

@nguyenanhquy
Hi

There is quite a few ressources explaining how to set up a FOG server .

Once you have managed to do that - taking care of possible DNS challenges - you can go forward and either make a live-boot image available or go the way of building your own image and then making that available to your computers in the network. This could probably be done in a “live” way as well.

As Sebastian said this scenario is not what FOG was built for, but it is rather easily imagineable to build something along those lines.
Maybe somebody else has already set up something like this, but the best way will probably be to read the wiki links and tackle it yourself.

The developers here are extremely friendly and helpful, but its always easier to help with specific problems and steps than answer a sprawling: Tell me how to set up FOG and do X or Y.

Get your feet wet, dive in and everybody will be happy to help if you get stuck

Thanks for the update Tom.
Really appreciate everything that is being done.

I’m not a developer, if there is anything besides posting on the forums when I have time that can be done I would happily help, just shoot me a pm.

And regarding donations: I will see if we can make some of our budget available for a donation … our NPO is sadly very restricting regarding funds at the moment. But we will see

Another thing that shows up in the log:

Several of the modules (for example: TaskReboot or the HostnameChanger) list:

Middleware::Response Module is disabled on the host

Where would I even do that? On the server - as far as I can see from the web-gui - the modules are activated. I also deactivated and reactivated them to see if that would kickstart anything - no success.

EDIT:
Okay … I just saw that one of the two hosts I deployed the image to had the modules deactivated in the Service Settings. I have no idea why, it is enabled globally and the other machine does not have them deactivated.
Now in the fog.log the Modules are shown with a response success on the one machine (the one that had the services disabled) but the “Unable to get subsection” message still appears on the other machine.

EDIT2:
The computer that had the services disabled just restarted - so in that case it seems everything works.

EDIT3: After reading some more I tried resetting the Encryption Data and aw and behold - everything seems fine now. Thanks for reading along if you have

Sorry if I’m being complicated - just trying to figure this out

I just tested with the minus (-) from a command prompt on my Windows 10 Client here, works fine.

Never mind - I got it working but finally moved away from the idea of having both services on the same server.

One service per server seems to be more appropriate in a VM-surrounding as it is with our servers.

Thanks!

Two links to some info - go from there:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749317(v=ws.10).aspx
General Advice on Answer File

And:
http://sybaspot.com/the-complete-guide-to-preparing-a-windows-7-deployment-image-using-audit-mode-and-sysprep-with-an-unattend-xml-answer-file/
They may be a little out of date, but you’ll get the general idea from it.

Also for a simple Answer file:
http://windowsafg.no-ip.org/

If you want to go fancy - and automate the process further - have a look at the postdownload script, for example here:

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script/7

The process would probably be along the lines of:

Image the machine -> FOG Postdownloadscript runs before boot -> Harddrive is mounted -> Certs are copied similar to your process above -> Setupcomplete script only has to add the certificates to the certificate store (or possibly the postdownloadscript can be modified to do that too)

All you would need then is to keep the certificate scripts up to date - which FOG probably does by itself after updates etc. - and they would be copied to your host without any further interaction needed.

Any you would save having to mount the harddrive to another machine to copy stuff … seems like its worth it to have a look at?

If you create an answer file you can also create users within that answer file. And using the copyprofile setting in the answer file you can make sure that all users get the same settings.

So the user you create via the answer file will have the settings you used while sysprepping the machine and all users that use the computer will have those settings as well - if you have people joining within a domain for example.

Hi ddavis.

I had the same problem here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/11717/fog-1-5-2-host-module-settings-don-t-save/11

Rebooting the fog server solved the problem.

I’m not sure I get what the problem is, sorry

Did you read the links?

To sysprep an image you make sure you work in audit mode, set up the system the way it is supposed to be set up and then you sysprep the machine.

During the sysprep process an autounattend.xml file is called, within this you can create a user or activate an admin. Those users then have the same settings you specified in the Audit mode.

So: Audit mode, prepare the system in the way you want it to be for the user -> sysprep -> in Unattend File you create the user you want -> That user has all the settings you prepared for it. If you make a separate user within the Audit process, I dont think that will work well with the sysprep process?

There might be other ways to do this of course, just the way I’ve been working on our setup the last year.

Then again we have a setup with a domain, different users that have their mailadresses tied to their login etc. etc. - you might not need all of that.

Ah well, stupid me.

Booted from a BIOS PXE bootable USB Stick and everything works just fine. Sorry for bothering you.

I am so so so sorry.

Just came out of a call with our external IT partner and casually he said: Oh btw.: I deactivated your Policies on the DHCP server.

And I didn’t notice of course … so sorry for wasting time, it works now.

Already enabled and works like a charm.

Can be closed, thx for helping out.

@butch2861 said in Windows 1809 Ent. Error after Upload to FOG:

@Sebastian-Roth After you run sysprep on a pc and upload the Image to the Fog Server the next thing that happens is the pc reboots and then the Fog Server loads the image just uploaded BACK to the pc you uploaded it from; almost like testing the uploaded image to the pc it came from as a test that it works.

Hi there

I was wondering, does the pc with the “golden” image restart and install correctly if you dont capture and deploy it?

Cause if it doesn’t that might mean that FOG is not involved in the problem at all - the error message I have had as well at some points, not sure what caused them then.