https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/linux-and-open-source/using-smartctl-to-get-smart-status-information-on-your-hard-drives/

• I want to add to the compatibility check and incorporate a smart status check on the drives being imaged.

• Also add the check right before imaging while the inits are doing checks, check the SMART disk status. If “PASSED” then continue. If “FAILED” then error out with message about a bad drive. If “UNSUPPORTED” then continue. (need to check on the message for unsupported but you get the jist)

This also gives you all the details of the HDD check it out!

apt-get install smartmontools 
smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl -H /dev/sda  

We could store that HDD info in the database if we wanted also for inventory purposes and such

I believe this will create a better stability of FOG itself

What do all of you think?

“System Cerial” sooo yummy!

Duh.

Re: Using FOG to PXE boot into your favorite installer images

Please Add “Paragon Hard Disk Manager” to your list this should work with any WinPE

Configuration currently works for UEFI only. It appears the wim file is missing bootmgr.exe for the BIOS booting systems

It is highly recommended to use this on a machine that has 4GB+ RAM.

First we’ll create the required directories:

mkdir -p /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
chmod -R 777 /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}

Now we’ll mount the WinPE iso over the loop directory. Then we’ll copy the contents of the DVD to the directory we built above.

mkdir -p /mnt/loop
mount -o loop /{full path where you have the iso stored}/{iso file} /mnt/loop

We are going to copy to /var/www/fog/Tools so we can use the http protocal already setup for fog management.

cp /mnt/loop/bootmgr /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/boot/bcd /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/boot/boot.sdi /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/sources/boot.wim /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/efi /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}

umount /mnt/loop

Download and install the latest wimboot kernel and extract it from the zip file.

• https://github.com/ipxe/wimboot/blob/master/wimboot
  The issue was discussed in this post: https://forums.fogproject.org/post/144293
  We will use tftp protocal for this file in the fog menu.

cd /tmp
wget http://git.ipxe.org/releases/wimboot/wimboot-latest.zip
unzip wimboot-latest.zip

Copy the wimboot file from the archive directory to root of the os directory (we’ll need this for every windows boot media, so we’ll place it in a common spot).

mkdir -p /tftpboot/os
cp ./wimboot-2.6.0-signed/wimboot /tftpboot/os
chmod -R 777 tftpboot/os

The last bit of magic we need to do is setup a new FOG iPXE boot menu entry for this OS.
In the fog WebGUI go to FOG Configuration->iPXE New Menu Entry
Set the following fields

Menu Item: os.{iso file name}
Description: {iso file you would like to boot from}
Parameters:
set tftp-path tftp://${fog-ip}
set http-path http://${fog-ip}/fog/Tools/HD_Manager
kernel ${tftp-path}/os/wimboot gui
imgfetch --name bootmgr ${http-path}/bootmgr bootmgr
imgfetch --name bootx64.efi ${http-path}/efi/boot/en_us/bootx64.efi bootx64.efi
imgfetch --name BCD ${http-path}/bcd BCD
imgfetch --name boot.sdi ${http-path}/boot.sdi boot.sdi
imgfetch --name boot.wim ${http-path}/boot.wim boot.wim
boot || goto MENU

That’s it, just pxe boot your target system and pick os.{iso file name} from the FOG iPXE boot menu.

You’re going to have to go into mysql database and delete the host with hostID=0.

mysql -u root -p fog

in mysql…

select * from hosts where hostID=0 \G

That will show all your hosts with a bad hostID then you will need to delete them…

delete from hosts where hostID=0;

FINALLY re-register the host you were having trouble with.

x32 bit machines should now be fixed in the latest git.

• x32 Upload times are slow but they will upload all the way. ~84Mib/s with lvl 9 compression (4:20:15)
• x32 Download times are “fast” ~1.8Gib/s lvl 9 compression (00:12:01)
• x64 Up 3.2Gib/s lvl9 (00:20:00) Down 7.3Gib/s lvl9 (00:09:00)

Full Description of problem:
1.)nfs mount issue was due to not getting an ip address during init boot.
2.)Not getting an ip was due to an addition of fixing VLAN issues for networks and sleep command was an “Illegal Instruction” (along with other commands essential to “init fog script”)
3.)sleep was not working due to a compiling issue in the glibc v2.21.

*Solution:
1.) Downgraded init’s to use glibc v2.20 (fixed sleep function).
2.) init’s now get ips from edits in files K40Network and S40Network.
3.)NFS mounts successfully now that init gets an ip address at boot.

These changes have been pushed to both init_32.xz and init.xz.

If you see this issue with your old 32 bit only processors please make sure you update to the latest version and this should be fixed.

P.S. @Tom-Elliott thanks for the remote sessions and time. Took us a while but we nailed down the problem

32-bit and 64-bit both work in the inits.

You just have to boot into debug mode right now and then type in the above commands. I will talk with Tom to see if we can change the compatibility check first as we do not want to mess up the current flow

git 4290

Issue occurred during download at step “restoring partition tables (GPT)…”

Error: “Error trying to restore GPT partition tables”

Checked gdisk /dev/sda but no partitions present due to the FOG script clearing them. Tried a “Quick wipe” and “Full wipe” tasks but still no go.

Went into gdisk again to see if I could create an MBR correctly and it did succeed.

I thought that it maybe the drive so I threw this drive into a confirmed working host. The new host download the image on to the HDD without issue.

Looking into BIOS updates or bad RAM for the issue. Will report back with full solution.

Just thought I would report just incase anyone else had the issue.

https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/blob/33fe4988cc738a625308267ae78cdc7879a6e411/src/buildroot/package/fog/scripts/etc/init.d/S99fog

I hope this helps a bit to understand the commands you can use in the new ipxe menu in 1.3.0.

The compression is done directly on the Host computer and then transferred up to the server.

That said there maybe a way to decompress and recompress an image but complications may occur.

Just did a clean install of Debian 8 (r3707). Still fails on getting packages. The work around was to:

apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-json php5-cli php5-curl mysql-client nfs-kernel-server vsftpd net-tools wget xinetd sysv-rc-conf tar gzip build-essential cpp gcc g++ m4 lftp php-gettext php5-mysqlnd curl libc6 libcurl3 zlib1g php5-fpm

then run the installer.

Re: Using FOG to PXE boot into your favorite installer images

Please Add “Paragon Hard Disk Manager” to your list this should work with any WinPE

Configuration currently works for UEFI only. It appears the wim file is missing bootmgr.exe for the BIOS booting systems

It is highly recommended to use this on a machine that has 4GB+ RAM.

First we’ll create the required directories:

mkdir -p /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
chmod -R 777 /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}

Now we’ll mount the WinPE iso over the loop directory. Then we’ll copy the contents of the DVD to the directory we built above.

mkdir -p /mnt/loop
mount -o loop /{full path where you have the iso stored}/{iso file} /mnt/loop

We are going to copy to /var/www/fog/Tools so we can use the http protocal already setup for fog management.

cp /mnt/loop/bootmgr /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/boot/bcd /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/boot/boot.sdi /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/sources/boot.wim /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}
cp /mnt/loop/efi /var/www/fog/Tools/{iso folder name}

umount /mnt/loop

Download and install the latest wimboot kernel and extract it from the zip file.

• https://github.com/ipxe/wimboot/blob/master/wimboot
  The issue was discussed in this post: https://forums.fogproject.org/post/144293
  We will use tftp protocal for this file in the fog menu.

cd /tmp
wget http://git.ipxe.org/releases/wimboot/wimboot-latest.zip
unzip wimboot-latest.zip

Copy the wimboot file from the archive directory to root of the os directory (we’ll need this for every windows boot media, so we’ll place it in a common spot).

mkdir -p /tftpboot/os
cp ./wimboot-2.6.0-signed/wimboot /tftpboot/os
chmod -R 777 tftpboot/os

The last bit of magic we need to do is setup a new FOG iPXE boot menu entry for this OS.
In the fog WebGUI go to FOG Configuration->iPXE New Menu Entry
Set the following fields

Menu Item: os.{iso file name}
Description: {iso file you would like to boot from}
Parameters:
set tftp-path tftp://${fog-ip}
set http-path http://${fog-ip}/fog/Tools/HD_Manager
kernel ${tftp-path}/os/wimboot gui
imgfetch --name bootmgr ${http-path}/bootmgr bootmgr
imgfetch --name bootx64.efi ${http-path}/efi/boot/en_us/bootx64.efi bootx64.efi
imgfetch --name BCD ${http-path}/bcd BCD
imgfetch --name boot.sdi ${http-path}/boot.sdi boot.sdi
imgfetch --name boot.wim ${http-path}/boot.wim boot.wim
boot || goto MENU

That’s it, just pxe boot your target system and pick os.{iso file name} from the FOG iPXE boot menu.

I can also atest to this. Windows 11 is not having any issue with my Dell Latitude 7440 2-in-1’s. Select “Windows 10” as your OS and you should be just fine…for now

@george1421 worked like a charm when switching to REFIND.

@george1421 Cool I’ll switch to that after my image is done uploading.

@developers Still the Esc key is used to access the menu instead of my web gui set key of F12.

Updated to Kernel 5.15.34 AMD/Intel 64 Bit.
Updated BIOS to 1.17.2

Access menu key is set to Esc but it is set to F12 in fog gui.

@george1421 this is a bug.

Change your Boot Exit settings in the fog web GUI to GRUB. If that is your current setting change to SANBOOT.

Good morning all,

It’s been a very long time. Fog has been running smoothly for years for me and I haven’t really had an issue… till now.

Got a new shipment of Dell Latitude 7420’s and they don’t have a eth jack on the main board and I want to keep the UEFI enabled. This is different from my other configuration of disabling UEFI set AHCI on and use the undionly.kpxe boot file.

Here is what I had to do to get to where I’m getting my Chainloading issue:

• FOG VERSION: 1.5.9.154

• Dell Latitude 7420
  –BISO Version 1.162

• Bios Setup

1. Boot configuration – > Turn Off Secure Boot
2. Integrated Devices --> USB/Thunderbolt Configuration --> Enable External USB Ports
3. Integrated Devices --> USB/Thunderbolt Configuration --> Enable USB Boot Support
4. Integrated Devices --> Enable Thunderbolt Boot Support --> On
5. Integrated Devices --> Enable Thunderbolt (and PCIe behind TBT) pre-boot modules --> On
6. Connection Enable UEFI Network Stack --> On
7. Pre-boot Behavior -->Fastboot Thorough

**These settings are recommended by Dell: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-ca/000131551/bios-settings-to-allow-pxe-boot-on-newer-model-dell-latitude-laptops

• DCHP server Scope Options

1. 066: <fog server ip address>
2. 067: ipxe.efi

• USB-C to eth adapter Spec’ed for Dell Latitude 7000 series

And here is my problem. IPXE shows that link is up and has and ip addresss when I request one from DHCP.

It gets to the prompting of my F12 hot key to to (access the menu)

Any suggestions?

I find that installing the client on the deployed image saves the most time. Unless you do not want to image the current machines. If you do not want to image them you can just install the client and when you are ready to image those machines make sure the client is on the deployed image.

Current Solution set Kernel to 4.19.64 and set global option in Fog Configuration–> FOG Settings --> General Settings --> Kernel ARGS to tsc=unstable

Luckly this is the last year for these machines.

So I’m guessing I’m going to need to edit all 100 of my units to have this argument? Or are you working on having a new bzImage for me to test?