underdog's picture
Heyja sory for my bad english i need an fog server but i installed it major times and everytime to manny errors and bugs. im wonder why turnkey linux dont have an fog appliance :?:P its an realy cool linux app and verry useful im wondering do you guys can make an .iso image?
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Liraz Siri's picture

Sounds like a great idea. We might get to that in the next release batch. By fog I'm going to assume you mean the free computer cloning solution right?

underdog's picture

Yes its an Cloning system.  its verry handy if you want to make an easy and fast backup for your computers or server over pxe boot.

Jeremy Davis's picture

See Rik's build notes here and my start on a TKLPatch (precursor to an official appliance) here. So some work has started, by no fully working solution yet... Hopefully I'll get back in to dev mode sometime soon and do some more work on this, but as I stated in my most recent post on the TKLPatch thread, I have a FOG server working on TKL and have been using it to test deployment of Win7 on a couple of machines. I still have more work to do on it (including getting it to deploy Linux images and run LiveCDs too) but hopefully I'll get back to it soon.

Jeremy Davis's picture

But in the meantime, what is on my GitHub account (as detailed in the thread I linked to above) is a basic TKLPatch (which is what I used to install my FOG server). So it is an unofficial beta of sorts, just you have to build it yourself...

Jeremy Davis's picture

I've personally used the FOG project in the past and found it to be awesome, so I totally agree.

The only thing that is a little bit of a pain is that their install script is quite opinionated and clearly designed to be run on an existing server. I know that they are trying to make it easier for users to install, but unfortunately, it'd be better for us if they just documented the install steps.

I've looked at it a few times and there are 2 obvious options. Either we'd need to pull apart the install script and just manually do the steps (cleanest way, but then probably a PITA to maintain). Or alternatively, feed the required switches/answers to the install script (probably easier to maintain but would require some hacks). Then, either way, we'd also need to create some inithooks so that the required config could be updated on firstboot.

I have had a quick crack at the latter and it seems perhaps easier than I had initially thought. Although it's currently failing because it makes calls to the 'systemctl' command (which doesn't work in our build chroot). So we'd need to tweak our temporary systemctl wrapper to cope with that (not that big a deal...). And obviously, we'd still need to do the firstboot (re)configuration.

Also it appears that the installer can be run with an existing config file and it will be honoured. The config file appears to be well documented, so perhaps we could leverage that for the install?

Alex Botzung's picture

Hello Jeremy,

I'm currently working on a solution to implement FOG Project into a "cookbook" for Turnkey core.


This cookbook is capable to generate a up-to-date Debian 12 with FOG Server already preinstalled.

Some scripts have been added to regenerate all certificates used by Fog (FOGCA, ...), recompiles iPXE (with the certificate freshly generated) and to add some features directly into confconsole. (change pwd, change IP address, ...)


All sources can be found here : 

https://github.com/abotzung/turnkey-fogserver/


Cheers !

 

Jeremy Davis's picture

Nice work! I've only had a quick glance, but your work looks awesome! I'm super impressed. And it's looks like you've gone the full distance with firstboot scripts and confconsole plugins. Fantastic mate!

Unfortunately, we're a small team and are still barely a quarter of the way through our v18.0 update release. So it might be a while before we can integrate your work. But please don't mistake lack of action for lack of appreciation for your contribution. I've opened a new issue on our tracker to track your appliance.

Out of interest, are you at all involved with FOG? Or did you just like it and want an appliance so decided to do it yourself?

Alex Botzung's picture

Thanks ! This was intially "a simple exercise" to tests differents things about FAB && Turnkey Core alongside with Jenkins.
Myself be a big fan of FOG and Turnkey, i've proposed the beta product to coworkers, "Turnkey, without hassles of configuring the entire system" all entusiast to test and uses this tool everyday.
After alot of testing, the final cookbook turns out to be pretty robust, without nasty bugs. :)

>Out of interest, are you at all involved with FOG?
Unfortunately, not. A lot of the tools present on my Github comes from a personal "need" at my everyday work. (including turnkey-fogserver) If the occasion comes to be, why not :)

Out of interest, i publish automated builds of theses iso, alongside with the buildlog on my website (https://foguefi.botzung.fr/)
Heres, you can find the turnkey-fogserver ("vanilla") along the turnkey-foguefi, a enhanced version of Fog capable of booting in UEFI Secure boot "out of the box", again, hassle free. (mostly ^^')
But beware, the foguefi flavour (by nature) is tricky to build ; the Turnkey "fab" host needs to be in the same kernel version of the debian core downloaded (atleast the linux-modules) to create the chroot ; the installer script of foguefi uses internally the command "mount" for unpacking the ext4 FOS rootfs "initramfs" partition. ( - Heres the line responsible - )

Turnkey Core is a great tool to build preformated Debian with all bells and whisles, thank you !

Cheers !

Bill Wilson's picture

Hi guys, I've used the FOG server in the past and liked it alot. I installed it on a TKL appliance and once I jumped through all of the hoops I found using the FOG server with PXE to be a good cloning solution. I used it in a multi-lab computer environment and it was very reliable and relatively user-friendly. Unfortunately, I did not keep my notes on my FOG installation so Alex's work developing a TKL appliance will be well appreciated! -BW

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