@kafluke and there inlies the issue. Groups affect hosts. If you have no hosts no data is stored.

https://news.fogproject.org/fog-1-5-4/

It’s already known about and noted with a work around.

I’ve also pushed up 4.17 kernel that at least in one case seems to have fixed the delayed saving/erasing element.

So chatting with @Joe-Gill We narrowed down what the problem.

First, the backstory.

So Multicast tasks would work for some machines, but not all. And, to add to that, it was always the same machines that failed to work. If the machines that failed were subsequently put into their own group, they would multicast without issue.

This lead me to ask if the machines that would fail were on a different switch from the rest of the machines, and indeed @Joe-Gill found out that this was the case. They are using Meraki switches and they replaced a few of them. Those that were replaced do not work fluidly with the older switches in place.

@Joe-Gill keep me truthful here, but this is the gist of this information.

Try instructions from here: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Include_any_ISO_in_the_FOG_Bootmenu#Hirens_15.04

Of note, it appears that it may only work with advanced menu, not the individual menu items directly though I’ll admit I have not really played around with having extra menus like this.

@george1421 was mandatory accidentally. In 1.5.4 it should be fixed so if the description is blank the label will be whatever the name was.

@mparlette You don’t need to. I’ll post information about this forum thread to the github so people know we were aware, just it wasn’t “technically” a bug, rather a misconfiguration.

@raju_inc you would likely need to run git pull after the checkout otherwise working is sitting at the same point as dev, master, etc…

This is not “stuck”. For some reason kernel 4.16.6 and possibly 4.17 have this issue.

The point, here, is if you wait long enough, it will finish. If you downgrade your kernel to 4.15.2 (which can be done right from the FOG GUI) and restart your machines, you should no longer have this issue.

@aysientor Please manually download the latest inits. I looked and the version is still set to “full” so it’s using the predownloaded binaries.

To download the latest run as root:

wget -O /var/www/fog/service/ipxe/init.xz https://fogproject.org/inits/init.xz
wget -O /var/www/fog/service/ipxe/init_32.xz https://fogproject.org/inits/init_32.xz

@george1421 Based on this, it would seem, to me, the 480 has a 10/100 NIC (possibly) vs the 410 having a 10/100/1000 NIC?

Just my thoughts on the whole thing.

Typically, because of the compression applied, you will see faster than your network speeds, though not by too much. For example, on a 1Gb network (both sides) and using SSD (both sides) you could see 13-18 GB/min, where on a 1Gb network the theoretical (goldilocks?) maximum (translated) would be 7.5 GB/min.

So compression is important in this. As CPU and write to disk is often much faster than the network itself. (This is also partially why Network->Disk is faster than Disk -> Disk, as the disk in question has to spin up, and locate the other point on the disk (same disk or not)).

It really seems that the NIC on the 480’s is different than the 410’s, or some other variable. Seeing as things seem normal on one, and not on the other, it really points to the machine being the problem, not something fog is doing.

If your other node is a server in its own right, then this is to be expected. Images aren’t automatically populated in the database, each one requires a definition to be available. So replicating an image from one server to another is fine, but it doesn’t automatically populate the receiving server with the definition.

@wayne-workman I believe it’s literally, error_logs

@alex84 reading the post I see no issues with what @Wayne-Workman has asked.

If indeed capture takes forever but deploy is fast as your post suggests, what is the compression set too? What is the RAM (size/speed)? What is the disk?(ssd/spinner) is the disk good?

@lpetelik I will try to clean up just to make the posts more concise, for example, this one here is about the ping hosts specifically so I’ll remove #1, #2, #3 and just make the title tell us what is wrong.

@waynejitehead might I make a simple suggestion.

If you’re using usb nics on multiple machine, I would preregister the machines Wi-Fi Macs and the usb Macs. Then I would make the usb nics ignore for client. This way your machines don’t need to worry about what is used for imaging. I know it’s more work but right now there isn’t a better option with FOG. We are hoping to have a more unique system of determining hosts but it will be a while.

@newlined you can fix this Behavior if you remove the /var/www/fog and then do: sudo ln -s /var/www/html/fog /var/www/fog

Is our postdownload telling the machine to reboot? Possibly there’s an error occurring during Post download?

As @george1421 suggested, please watch the machine. Maybe grab a slo-mo video of the tail end of the partclone screen until the machine reboots?

What’s your machine’s timestamp compared to an atomic clock?

Atomic clock can be found here: https://www.time.gov/

Of course your timezone will adjust slightly, but the main point is you cannot be more or less than 5 minutes of the atomic clocks (typically) as that will cause the SSL cert to be invalidated (hence the ssl error you’re seeing.) Of course there could be many other reasons to what’s causing this, but I would recommend checking the time first as its the simplest course of action.

@quazz Typoed version, it is 1.5.4 they’re using.

@scosta What i’m seeing is:

#!ipxe
clear username
clear password
login
params
param username ${username}
param password ${password}
chain ${boot-url}/service/ipxe/advanced.php##params
#!ipxe

Do you know where the second #!ipxe is coming from? As far as I can tell, this is where things are breaking down. Essentially what it’s doing is clearing the login information, rebuilding it, then restarting the whole of iPXE. This would explain why you’re seeing an error.

The advanced menu itself, should not be edited from the Boot Menu element, beyond telling it to display to all hosts if thats how you want it. However, you shouldn’t need to change this portion. You would put your information under:

FOG Configuration Page->FOG Settings->FOG_PXE_ADVANCED

In the advanced side you would put your necessary items, like your Hirens bootCD information.

The advanced menu element hasn’t changed in quite some time, and I’ll admit I haven’t exactly tested it, as creating a new item is usually just easier. That said your advanced field should contain the menu items you want. (Essentially Advanced Menu is a clean slate separate from the main FOG Default menu stuff.)

Here’s the wiki on example setup for the advanced system. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Advanced_Boot_Menu_Configuration_options (Though you don’t need the “secured” portion as that’s kind of the purpose of hte advanced login handling. But I could be wrong, I really haven’t played much with “advanced” stuff in a long time.)

An example put on the FOG_PXE_ADVANCED field might be (again untested):

goto MENU
:MENU
menu
item --gap Please Select one of the items below
item hirens Hirens BootCD 15.2
item return Return to main menu
choose --default hirens target && goto ${target}
:hirens
initrd http://${fog-ip}/fog/iso/Hiren_s_BootCD_15_2.iso
chain memdisk iso raw
:return
chain http://${fog-ip}/${fog-webroot}/service/ipxe/boot.php?mac=${net0/mac} || goto MENU
autoboot

I understand your frustration and sorry you’ve had such a hard time getting things up and running. That said, you’ve only posted informing us that you even had a problem 5 days ago. I am certain we can help get this running but we need information as to the things you’ve tried, the exact messages you’re seeing, etc…

If you feel you must use another product, then I understand, but if you’re having this many issues with FOG, chances are likely that you’ll have similar issues using another product. Clonezilla, SCCM, MDT/WDS, etc… will have similar methods each with their own pros and cons.

As you said you’ve been working on this for 3 weeks, but from allowing us to help you we’ve only had 5 days (and 2 of them were a weekend.) I’m not sure how much you expect us to be able to help.

Can you provide more direct error messages? I’m not quite sure what error you’re referring too with the “Could not complete tasking” as it should provide more information. From the sounds of things, FTP is either not running, or something else is blocking FTP altogether. I don’t know.

3 Messages and you’re ready to give up seems a bit rash to me. Then again, I do understand your frustration. I just don’t know how you expected us to get you running with so little information and back and forth between the Senior Developer of FOG and our community.