Best posts made by Wayne Workman

I appreciate what you do for FOG. If you need VM space, you know you can give me a hollar.

There’s a copy of fog and fog-community-scripts stored in the arctic printed on film that will last over a thousand years.

I think that is simply awesome.

Primary: https://archiveprogram.github.com/

Others:

• https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/open-source/githubs-arctic-vault-makes-sure-open-source-code-survives-apocalypse
• https://hackaday.com/2020/07/29/ask-hackaday-why-did-github-ship-all-our-software-off-to-the-arctic/

@WalterT This post is completely unhelpful to yourself and to the fog community, and seems rash as well. If you need help with getting fog setup, create a thread about your specific problem, provide details, screenshots, logs, information. The community will help you as best as possible after you provide basic details about your specific issue.

Ok…

I’m feeling pretty ignorant at the moment.

I got to messing with this again and was able to try out a new unmanaged 1Gbps Cisco switch with it and I went through several different configurations in my tests and kept getting inconsistent results.

I have finally found out what the issue was. It was a bad patch cable the whole time.

That’s pretty shameful on my part as a technician, but it would be more shameful to conceal my mistake and not report what the issue was.

I do believe I exhausted every single other possible option before I realized it was the patch cable. Checking simple things first is hammered into all of us as troubleshooters, and the lesson has definitely been reinforced in me.

I come from Semantic Ghost background.

Fog is MUCH faster, supports queuing, renaming, joining to the domain, and there is ample support and high-responsiveness on the forums, with ample materials available in the wiki as well.

FOG images in general compress very well. 40GB compresses down usually to about 19GB on the server’s disk.

It’s free - not free like free beer, but free as in you may freely examine the code, freely make copies, freely make changes to your copies, freely distribute it under the GNU GPLv3 License, free to charge for it even, if you can (although I doubt you’d be successful)! The GNU GPLv3 allows for all of these things, as long as the License is respected and provided with copies and changes, and as long as all changes are completely open source and available to the public.

FOG can serve as a reliable DHCP server for you, offering more control and more options than Windows Server 2008 and below did (see our article on BIOS and UEFI Co-Existence).

FOG bridges the imaging gap for OSX, Linux, and Windows, and provides a management client for all three that can name them, join them to the domain, and run snapins on - all from a common web interface.

FOG can manage printers for you, allowing you to avoid cluttering up your domain controllers and group policy.

I use WOL to wake computers up on a schedule easily, and during breaks like spring break and winter break, I can easily disable it.

I use the fog client to push out Chrome updates regularly - with absolute ease. Using snapins also keeps group policy on computers and domain controllers less cluttered.

FOG logs logins for me, which I was previously logging using advanced scripting techniques that only I understood in my organization. Now, just using the web interface technicians can see login history for a computer or individual.

Fog supports wiping HDDs, and I can integrate ISOs into fog without much trouble.

Used to be, imaging a lab was a two to three person job for several hours with Ghost, and now it takes one single technician under 30 minutes - all of which are spent standing around and making sure things go smoothly. For example, we don’t have to name computers because fog does this. We don’t have to join to the domain because fog does this.

Please don’t disrespect CloneZilla in your report. Comparing it to FOG is unfair. It’s comparing apples to oranges. CloneZilla has strengths where FOG has weaknesses, and vice versa. For instance, if there are strict regulations on a network that a individual technician is not allowed to change, CloneZilla could be the winner in that scenario. If the network performs poorly, has problems, is slow, or non-existent, CloneZilla is the clear winner. If a technician does not have a server or old computer to dedicate as a FOG server, then CloneZilla is the winner. Also, CloneZilla is the most simple way to clone a FOG server! Where CloneZilla has weaknesses, FOG far excels. And where FOG excells is using your network to get work done - and fast. Bottom line is - CloneZilla is free open source software and has it’s place in the computer imaging industry and it should be respected for what it is.

@ITSolutions said in DNS Name Goes to Old FOG Installation:

Ubuntu moved the default location for web pages in 14.04 from /var/www to /var/www/html. FOG is designed to do a symlink back to /var/www, but maybe something broke in that.

I think that statement there is what’s going on.

So, if you use the host name, you are taken to 1.2.0 interface, but if you use the IP you are taken to fog trunk interface.

This means that the web files for 1.2.0 obviously still exist, and the trunk files are there too.

If it were me, I’d delete everything in /var/www EXCEPT for the html directory, and I would delete everything INSIDE of /var/www/html and re-run the installer. That should fix it.

So for instance if you saw some-folder inside /var/www you’d do rm -rf /var/www/some-folder That’s a recursive delete command. same goes for everything in the other.

You can list the contents of the directory, including hidden files, with ls -la

People that are new to fog don’t see the value in registering normally - and that’s OK. But fog comes to life with registered computers - automatic host naming, automatic domain joining, automated startups, shutdowns, reboots, software & script deployments, printer management, tracking of who logs into and out of said computers, inventory reports, imaging history, and many other things. Many of FOG’s features, you cannot use without registering.

And after you try out registering & using these features, you will start to understand how unnecessarily hard you were working before.

the WiKi SVN article somewhat promotes upgrading to the developmental revisions…

I really think that the other upgrading methods should be ditched, IMHO. But others here feel otherwise.

At the least, the Upgrade To Trunk article and the SVN article ought to be merged. I’ve thought about doing this, but the SVN portion would be huge compared to the others, and I just haven’t gave it much time nor thought.

And I’m not “In” enough to maintain the news section.

Sad truth is, although Tom is fuc**** awesome at what he does, he is largely a one-man-army and he has a full time job and wife and so on. He’s the driving force behind FOG.

JBob comes in 2nd, with massive improvements to the new FOG client.

The other developers aren’t active enough (IMHO) to be able to keep the news section updated.

And me,

I’m a forum troll, and I help people as I can, but I’m not “in” enough to keep it updated (IMHO).

I’m more than willing to try, but I may fall short sometimes…

Over the last few weeks, working with Tom, I was able to test changes back and forth over for Ubuntu 16 and Debian 8.

Both now install without modifications, without special commands.

Install Debian 8, just pull down fog and run the installer as normal. It works.

Install Ubuntu 16, just pull down fog and run the installer as normal. It works.

@Developers @Moderators @Testers

Just created this article:

https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/BIOS_and_UEFI_Co-Existence

@bacelo

In case it helps clarify things - I’ll explain briefly how the network booting process works with FOG.

A DHCP service runs on some machine somewhere.

A host turns on… (This host is on the same network that DHCP is running on.)

Discovery
The host broadcasts to the network “Hey, I need an address.”

Offer
The DHCP service hears the broadcast, and then broadcast’s back “Here use this address and these options…”

Momentary pause
The host & server momentarily listen on the network for any objections from other hosts (a host with the same IP will broadcast “No you can’t use that, I already have it!”)

Request
The host then responds to the DHCP server with yet another broadcast and says “Ok, I want this address”.

Acknowledge
The server hears that and then responds with a broadcast saying “OK, you’ve got it, I’ve made note.”

So now… the HOST has an IP and configuration for that IP. The configuration (in FOG’s scenario) also contains DHCP Options 066 and 067. 66 is the “Next-Server” and 67 is the “Boot-file”. These options are sent out in the DHCP Offer (above).

The host will then ask the Next-Server for the Boot-File using TFTP.

The TFTP Server (usually the FOG server) will respond with the requested file.

And then other things begin happening… but you’re not getting even this far - you’re host isn’t getting an address from the FOG server, it’s getting an address from another DHCP server elsewhere - and THAT DHCP server is not configured correctly to hand out options 066 and 067.

Now then…

Hopefully you can see how having two DHCP Services on a network with one not configured will simply not work 100% of the time (and maybe none of the time). This is what @george1421 and @Sebastian-Roth were talking about. If there is a pre-existing DHCP Service running on the network, you need to edit that. We happen to have a full guide written just for doing this: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Modifying_existing_DHCP_server_to_work_with_FOG

Most of our computers here work with sanboot style. The ones that do work with sanboot style won’t work with any other type.

And we have some lenovos that don’t work with sanboot style.

I’d like for the “exit to hard drive type” to be a client setting instead of a global setting, so that I can specify an “exit to hard drive type” that works for each particular model.

Edit

I’d like for the Global value inside of FOG Config to be the “default” value for new hosts, but I’d still like to set this at the host level. I’d also like to be able to use groups to set the value.

I have a VM environment at home with clean snapshots for various Linux distributions that I use for testing. I’ll be testing the fog installer on various distributions for each of the release candidates, and for updated and newer distributions in the future to see if it installs or not according to steps in the Wiki, and if not the steps I took to correct it.

Each of these tests will be from a clean snapshot that is fully updated with all standard updates. All tests use the command ./installfog.sh -y to use all defaults and install unattended.

UPDATE
Installation tests have been automated. The daily results & logs are available to the public, see the link in my signature.

Just created this article:

https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/BIOS_and_UEFI_Co-Existence

@Arrowhead-IT in RHEL 7 / Fedora 19+ / CentOS 7 it’s just yum install dhcp

@kbramhall I know you said you weren’t behind a proxy - but we’ve heard/seen the issue you’re describing several times and more times than not it’s because of a proxy server / web filter / firewall higher up on the network that’s blocking access to repositories and mirrors.

Can you make double sure?

@george1421 said:

But again no joy for use who need it today with the 1.3(ish) release. Fog 2.0 sounds really nice.

We could probably hack something together.

October 30th, 2016
FOG Version: 1.3.0 RC-18
Git Commit: 4a4e4c686e98c7946f61462823b525287a8c72b2

• Arch Linux 2016.10.01 fully updated - installs without issue.
• Debian 8 fully updated - installs without issue.
• Fedora 24 fully updated - installs without issue per wiki instructions.
• Ubuntu 16 fully updated - installs without issue.
• CentOS 7 fully updated - installs without issue per wiki instructions

Link to the first video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O50q-l5OK64

@Tom-Elliott said:

@ManofValor the settings look fine. This is particularly why I love teamviewer though. I can’t find an error on my side namely because. I don’t have a uefi system to work with. I’m pretty certain I’ve screwed up somewhere but I haven’t a clue what or where .

Just going to go ahead and vouch for anyone here with a moderator or developer (or Senior Developer) tag by their name. These people are trustworthy.

I mean, if you’re running fog trunk, you’re quite literally running thousands and thousands of lines of code written by the developers on a server inside your organization. Not trusting the developers via team viewer is like owning a Ford vehicle, and then rejecting assistance from Ford’s senior chief engineer (who happens to be your brother too).

@THEMCV I would have the snapinpack both install the software and then place the file too. This way the two are together, and one is always coming before the other.

Where fog dumps the files - it was quite confusing to me until I understood it. The wiki article SnapinPacks “SnapinPacks are Compressed” section explains it very throughly.

So if you name the snapinpack in the FOG web interface ciscoanyconnect, and the zip file does not contain yet another folder in it but just contains these three files:

• Installer
• .xml file
• .bat file <-- more about this in a minute.

You’d upload the snapinpack to the web interface as a snapin pack (this is illustrated in the wiki). When it’s deployed, these files are moved from the FOG server to the host, and then extracted to this path:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\FOG\tmp\ciscoanyconnect\your.bat
• C:\Program Files (x86)\FOG\tmp\ciscoanyconnect\your.xml
• C:\Program Files (x86)\FOG\tmp\ciscoanyconnect\installer.msi or whatever it is

Now, from this point, after the copy finishes, the FOG Client initiates the .bat file (but it could initiate any executable, like a powershell script or a exe or .sh or whatever).

The .bat file must make all the correct calls to do everything necessary. For example, running a msi correctly in this situation might be:

msiexec.exe /i "C:\Program Files (x86)\FOG\tmp\ciscoanyconnect\installer.msi" /quiet

After this, and according to the info you gave below, the copy line would come last in the script, and may look something like this:

copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\FOG\tmp\ciscoanyconnect\your.xml" "C:\ProgramData\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client\Profile\your.xml"

Note the quotes around the paths, thats because they has spaces in them.

Now, when you’re zipping this stuff up, and then uploading it to the web interface, you will need to specify that the SnapinPack is going to run a bat file, and then you need to put that bat file’s name in with the settings.

Watch the “very through” video if you have time, all this stuff is explained there:
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=SnapinPacks#Very_thorough_example