Posts made by tian

We are still trying some things with Fog and Apple/iMacs. Now there is the case that our iMacs had Fusion Drive configured by default (1TB HDD + 120GB SSD).

When the capture task (“Apple Mac OS”, Multiple Partitions - all disks) starts, the first partition of the first hard drive (sda1) is correctly recognized as FAT32 and processes - after that sda2 is only recognized as RAW and it wants to read all 1TB of this partition. That was the point when we stopped the capture task.

Then we deleted the logical Fusion Drive volume and installed OSX on the 120GB SSD and some programs on the 1TB drive. The capturing task for this got both hard drives correctly (sda2 and sdb2 both have been recognized as “HFS Plus”) and also deploying was working fine. (Version 8405)

Will it ever be possible to capture (except RAW mode) a Fusion Drive based Apple computer or is this basically impossible with fog/partclone?

Thanks for clarifying this.

• Here are the outputs of how the Fusion Drive is structured and what fdisk can see.

+-- Logical Volume Group 0B0C9110-00C1-4FFC-8B4C-43838EBA8467
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         1120333979648 B (1.1 TB)
    Free Space:   114688 B (114.7 KB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 3FC1F21A-BCCB-44E0-AA38-2DB01A098269
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 7311A6E0-7270-4296-B876-2BA6DD3FD633
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     999345127424 B (999.3 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 933DD69E-C958-496B-82F5-9C37FB3C7BA9
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         None
        |
        +-> Logical Volume FE81AFDB-4DE9-4A4C-B68A-3A1161F2453D
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk3
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          1111826497536 B (1.1 TB)
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               System
            Volume Name:           System
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
            LVG Type:              Fusion, Sparse

Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: BE052CDF-27AC-46B6-A41F-938739331BE5

Device          Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1          40     409639     409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sda2      409640 1952255591 1951845952 930.7G Apple Core storage
/dev/sda3  1952255592 1953525127    1269536 619.9M Apple boot

Disk /dev/sdb: 113 GiB, 121332826112 bytes, 236978176 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: D8DBD088-623B-4733-B8F6-D6EAB8FFBED3

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdb1         40    409639    409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sdb2     409640 236715991 236306352 112.7G Apple Core storage
/dev/sdb3  236715992 236978135    262144   128M Apple boot

dmidecode is not available by default in OSX it seems. I started the fog debug mode and got the following:

# dmidecode 2.12
# SMBIOS entry point at 0x8cd15000
SMBIOS 2.4 present.
51 structures occupying 2746 bytes.
Table at 0x8CD14000```

The message " Invalid entry length (0). DMI table is broken! Stop." only appears at the end of the dmidecode command.

I get “# dmidecode 2.12” returned, when I run dmidecode on the fog server. Running the inventory task I can’t see a dmidecode version.

The hardware inventory task from this iMac model (I tested with 2 computers of this model) is returning the correct data, but with a lot of unwanted messages (also can be seen on the clients screen when doing the inventory task):

Is it possible to fix that or is that some of Apple’s problem? “Normal” computers don’t have the DMI messages in the inventory till now.
We used version 8343 and 8355 for the inventory task.

Another question:
Is possible to get data from more than one hard disk? Normally the computers we use with fog just have one hard disk.
But his model has an additional SSD build in connected on a Apple PCI SSD Controller:

Thanks in advance

I deactivated the entries for “Hidden Menu” and “No Menu” and the menu appeared. But I activated both entries again because the “Chainloading failed” message does not appear, when a task is planned for this client. I tried the hardware inventory and capturing task - both tasks still seem to have some other problems on the iMac, but at least they are beginning to run/start. Sorry for the inconvenience and for not testing this simple thing first…

Since it is just a appearing, when booting from network without a planned task it should be no problem for the iMacs since we would have to net boot them manually every time.

Thanks for your effort.

We’re using the “fancy version” (https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=FOG_on_a_MAC#fancy) with ipxe.efi to get pxe-boot working with the iMac. - The DHCP server is not the fog-server itself but also a Linux based server.

(Version 8343 still has this problem.)

@tom-elliott

I found something in other_vhosts_access.log:

%fog_ip%:80 %imac_ip% - - [30/Jun/2016:15:29:21 +0200] "POST /fog/service/ipxe/boot.php HTTP/1.1" 200 432 "-" "iPXE/1.0.0+ (7156)"

The error.log and access.log didn’t contain anything from the time pxe-booting the iMac.

@Sebastian-Roth said in "Chainloading Failed" on iPXE-Boot:

@tian Please open that URL (http://x.x.x.x/fog/service/ipxe/boot.php) in your browser and copy/paste the full content here in the forum (change IPs if you like but please post the full content).

#!ipxe
set fog-ip %fog_ip%
set fog-webroot fog
set boot-url http://${fog-ip}/${fog-webroot}
cpuid --ext 29 && set arch x86_64 || set arch i386
iseq ${platform} efi && set key 0x1b || set key 0x1b
iseq ${platform} efi && set keyName ESC || set keyName Escape
prompt --key ${key} --timeout 3000 Booting... (Press ${keyName} to access the menu) && goto menuAccess || sanboot --no-describe --drive 0x80
:menuAccess
login
params
param mac0 ${net0/mac}
param arch ${arch}
param platform ${platform}
param username ${username}
param password ${password}
param menuaccess 1
param debug 1
isset ${net1/mac} && param mac1 ${net1/mac} || goto bootme
isset ${net2/mac} && param mac2 ${net2/mac} || goto bootme
:bootme
chain -ar http://%fog_ip%/fog/service/ipxe/boot.php##params```

With version 8341 it is still the same.

We’re currently experimenting on cloning Apple/iMacs with fog.

The PXE boot seems to be fine already and iPXE is loaded (Also the entry in the mac’s boot menu is there - twice which seems not to be a problem).
But at the end of the iPXE Process it won’t continue and stops with “Chainloading failed, hit ‘s’ for the iPXE shell; reboot in 10 seconds”:

We first tested with fog version 8301 and updated today to 8329 but the problem remains.

Here are some of the iMac’s data that might be important:

• iMac14,2 (late 2013), Intel Core i5 3,2 GHz, Boot-ROM-Version: IM142.0118.B13
• NIC: Broadcom 57766-A1, Firmware 57766a-v1.15

If there are any more information (from logs, hardware, iPXE shell…) needed I can get them.

@Tom-Elliott Maybe the group deployment task is not working correctly with this in the trunk versions. Except the wrong display the other things are working. We also just use one server (and on this one the default storage/node). We mostly use group deployment tasks - single deployment tasks are not used that often and wouldn’t reach the limit we set.

Thanks for all the effort you put into solving this.

@Tom-Elliott said:

@tian While I’m glad we’re closer, I hope to have finally gotten this more properly solved. The checkin process was constantly updating the time which is why you would see the numbers change (depending on the other host checking in).

It should be good now, Hopefully.

I don’t want to tell you - but now (Version 6981) all queued computers display “There are 0 before me” again …(It also would be fine just to display the total number of computers waiting - or just display the time waited - if this problem consumes too much time at the moment…)

@Tom-Elliott Thanks for your hard work. Now the numbers are changing and are different. But these are totally mixed up now (Version 6977):


The pictures were taken from different computers.
A lot of times there still are the same numbers to displayed on different computers at the same time (maybe the 5 seconds interval is too huge to see if there are moments with double numbers).

Is there anything else I can provide?

(In fog 0.32 the queued numbers were/are fine - with the difference that there was/is a delay till free slots can be used by queued computers. Now in the recent versions the computers starting up first gets the free slots - but that is ok.)

@Tom-Elliott I just did a test with version 6971 and it looks different now but still seems not completely correct.
The number in “There are x before me” is counting now, but it displays the same number on all the queued computers again:

• When there are four comupter waiting it is “3” on all waiting computers
• with five computers it is “4” on all waiting computers
• at the end all six queued computers display “There are 5 before me” on all waiting computers
  I waited 10+ minutes again, but the computers didn’t display different numbers.

Here you can see the change of the number (that takes place on all computers) when one more computer is waiting:

@Tom-Elliott said:

@tian Did all 6 show the same message in the first 5 minutes of it “waiting”?

I just watched the queued computers for 10+ minutes. All of the queued computers show “There are 0 before me” from the very beginning. The number never changes to 1, 2, 3 or sth. else.

Also thanks for the explanation for the time format.

@Tom-Elliott There is only one group deployment task running. I just wondered because I’m sure some time ago the output was different.

“There are 0 before me” is displayed for every one of the 6 queued computers now. On earlier fog versions (like 0.32) there has been also messages that 0, 1, 2, 3 … are in front of a computer. So there is no “fixed queue” anymore? (and the queued hosts are picked randomly now?)

Everything else is fine at the moment (pxe, partclone, renaming, active directory, snapins, …) so if this is the normal output now I just have to get used to it.

@Tom-Elliott
What’s the node’s maxclients? -> 13
What’s the group’s total slots? -> ?
What’s the group’s available slots? -> ?

The last two values I don’t know how the get - this is what i can choose on the dashboard disk usage graph:

(We only have a single storage node/group that have been created by fog by default)

When I click on the disk usage graph I just can get the servers hardware information.

@Tom-Elliott It is the same (on the queued computers screen and scheduler log) in version 6929 .

There are some display errors (and/or bugs?) when the max. allowed number of computers is deploying (Unicast) and some computers have been queued.

The first strange thing is that always “Attempting to check in … Failed” is displayed every 5 seconds when the time is increased:

In the scheduler log i can see this message every 5 seconds (The host names are matching the queued computers):

[03-24-16 11:26:26 am] * 6 active tasks awaiting check-in.
[03-24-16 11:26:26 am] | Sending WOL Packet(s)
[03-24-16 11:26:26 am] 		- Host: pc1 WOL sent to all macs associated
[03-24-16 11:26:27 am] 		- Host: pc2 WOL sent to all macs associated
[03-24-16 11:26:27 am] 		- Host: pc3 WOL sent to all macs associated
[03-24-16 11:26:27 am] 		- Host: pc4 WOL sent to all macs associated
[03-24-16 11:26:28 am] 		- Host: pc5 WOL sent to all macs associated
[03-24-16 11:26:28 am] 		- Host: pc6 WOL sent to all macs associated
[03-24-16 11:26:28 am] * No tasks found!

The second error is that all the queued computers display “No open slots, There are 0 before me.”

When there is a free slot again partclone begins to deploy the image to one (not all) of the queued computers.

Also the minutes are just displayed as “i” :

Please tell me if you need some more information.

@Tom-Elliott @Sebastian-Roth I just did a quick test with svn5107. Right now a deploy task has been running and the hard disk information has been kept. Tomorrow I’ll test some more and report back if there is still something wrong, but it looks like it is OK now.

Thanks everyone for fixing this.

@Wayne-Workman The computer models I use for testing the trunk versions of fog at the moment are all the same model/product from the same manufacturer- so all have the same Mainboard, CPU, BIOS version, BIOS settings, … just the hard disk models are from 2 different brands (but same size). When experimenting some time ago with an iMac (only one for up/-downloading) I think there has been the same behavior.

For the question about the revision number - I’m not 100% sure about it, but I’ll try to remember as good as possible:

• From what I remember I started experimenting with the iMAC around May last year for some time, so the problem could already have been there there in svn revisions 34xx to 37xx.
• Between svn37xx and svn4457 I remember I checked a few times if the problem still exists, but couldn’t search more deep into this at this moment. With git version 5572 (svn4457) I began to search for the moment in the deployment process where this is happening.
• before the trunk versions there was also FOG 1.2.0 running for a short time - but I didn’t pay attention to hardware inventory back then.