FOG Guide

IPBRICK International

July 17, 2013

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Copyright c©IPBRICK International

All rights reserved.

The information in this manual is subject to change without prior notice. Thepresented explanations, technical data, configurations and recommendations areprecise and trustful. Nevertheless, they have no expressed or implied guarantees.

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Contents

1 Introduction 5

2 Product Information 5

3 Requirements 6

4 Installation 64.1 Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64.2 Installation Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

5 Important Technical Notes 7

6 FOG’s Graphical User Interface (GUI) 8

7 Creating an image file 9

8 Assign Image to Host 13

9 Additional Info 19

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List of Figures

1 FOG Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 IPBrick Update page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 FOG Login page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 FOG’s GUI index page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 BIOS Boot Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Image Management icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Image Management page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Host Management icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Host Management page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1110 Inserted Host Confirmation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1111 Host Management page with a Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1212 Host Management - Host’s form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1213 Basic Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1314 Upload Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1315 BIOS Boot Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1416 All Hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1417 Host Management Selecting the image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1518 Basic Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1519 Confirm Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1620 My Computer - Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1621 Computer Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1722 Computer Rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1723 sudo su . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1824 Open the etc-hosts file with the vi editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1825 Edit the machine’s name in the Hosts file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1826 Open the hostname file with the vi editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1827 Name edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

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1 Introduction

FOG cloning solution is a new product of IPBRICK International and it demon-strates, once again, our commitment in providing the technical solutions that willcater to all your needs.

FOG is a Linux-based, free and open source computer imaging solution. FOGdoesn’t use any boot disks, or CDs; everything is done via TFTP and PXE. Also,with fog many drivers are built into the kernel, so you don’t really need to worryabout drivers.

Fog is centralized and enables your system’s administrator to clone machinesand remotely replicate them to any other at your convenience. This is very usefulsince it saves you the time, money and effort of manually installing each machine.

2 Product Information

• With FOG, the end user no longer needs to worry about NIC drivers toimage a computer, this is all handled by the kernel. FOG management isdone via an easy to use web GUI.

• FOG is centralized. Most of tasks done on FOG don’t require the user tovisit the client PC. For example if you imaging a computer all you need todo is start the task. After the task is started the computer will turn on, ifit is off, PXE will load the OS, DHCP will give it an IP address, FOG willtell the server it is in progress, and PartImage will image your computer.Then when imaging is done FOG will tell PXE not to boot the machine tothe fog image and your computer boots up. After the computer is booted, ifthe FOG service is installed, FOG will change the computer’s hostname andthat computer is ready to use!

• FOG is easy to access. All you need is a web browser to image a computer,no client software required.

• FOG is Powerful. With features like virus scanning, memory testing, diskwiping, testdisk, and file recovery, FOG does more than just imaging.

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Figure 1: FOG Overview

3 Requirements

To install the FOG solution in your IPBRICK you will need:

• An IPBrick v5.3 with update 11 installed

• Two FOG software packages (fogpackages_1.0.deb and fog4ipbrick_1.0.deb)

4 Installation

Again, we point the fact that to install the two FOG .deb packages you needto update your IPBRICK v5.3 with at least update 11!

4.1 Software

The FOG packages is available at our eshop:http://eshop.ipbrick.com/eshop/

At: Downloads -> Software -> IPBrick Related Software -> IPBrick 5.3

Note: You have to be registered at our eshop for the Download section to beavailable.

4.2 Installation Procedure

1. Access IPBrick’s web interface:

Advanced Configurations > IPBrick > Update (Figure 2);

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Figure 2: IPBrick Update page

Install them in this order:

(a) fogpackages_1.0.deb

(b) fog4ipbrick_1.0.deb.

2. Click on the Browse button, select the fogpackages_1.0.deb and install it;

3. Please follow the installation instructions;

4. Repeat the procedure for fog4ipbrick_1.0.deb

5. Apply Configurations.

If the package was correctly installed you will be able to visualize that indica-tion on the Update page of IPBRICK’s web interface.

Note: Please don’t forget to Apply Configurations!!!

5 Important Technical Notes

FOG is a simple solution but it requires that you follow these notes, in orderfor it to function properly:

• All machines (the ones subject of cloning and also the ones that are goingto be replicated have to be registered in IPBRICK. This is done viaIPBRICK’s web interface at:

IPBRICK.I > Machines Management

• No disk can be partitioned!

• The file system used in those disks can only be an ext1, ext2 or ext3 allother versions of ext or other file systems are not compatible.

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• Cloning must always happen between disks of the same capacity orfrom a smaller to a larger one. In this last case, the exceeding capacitywill not be read, i.e: A disk with 80GB cloned from a 40GB disk will havean excess of 40GB, but this memory will be useless, for all purposes whencloning from a smaller to a larger disk, the latter will become of the samecapacity as the smaller one.

• We strongly advise you to clone machines with the same hardwarespecifications. Problems may arise from cloning machines with differentmotherboards, CPUs’, etc.

6 FOG’s Graphical User Interface (GUI)

After installation you will may access the FOG’s web interface via web browser,the URL is:

https://fog.domain.com

Note: Please substitute domain.com with your own domain name.

You will be asked to login.

Figure 3: FOG Login page

These are the default credentials:

• Username: fog

• Password: password

After login you will have a main index page.

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Figure 4: FOG’s GUI index page

Before operating with FOG’s GUI In order to clone a machine to one or severalhosts you will need to configure the clone machine BIOS to boot by network. Thefollowing sections will guide you through the process of creating a clone imagefrom a machine 7 and also to replicate that same image to one or several hosts 8.

7 Creating an image file

1. Access the BIOS of the machine that is going to be cloned (remember thatit has to be registered at IPBRICK) and at Boot options change the config-uration in order that it will boot first from the network.

Figure 5: BIOS Boot Options

2. Access the FOG’s GUI and click on the Image Management icon;

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Figure 6: Image Management icon

3. Click on the New Image link;

4. Give it a Name, Description, default storage group, filename, and Image type(Select: Single Disk (Not Resizable)).

5. Click on the Add button.

Figure 7: Image Management page

Note: All this does is to create a label at the IPBRICK server, this will serveto identify the image you will create. The actual image is not yet stored!

6. The next step is to create Hosts (machines) here at the FOG’s GUI. Asstated previously all these hosts have to be inserted at IPBRICK;

7. Click on the Host Management icon;

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Figure 8: Host Management icon

8. Click now on the Add New Host link. On the Host insertion form fill thefirst three fields (Host Name, Host IP and Primary MAC) exactly the sameas in IPBRICK;

Figure 9: Host Management page

Select the image you created (e.g.:ubuntu12_04) and its OS. Click on Add tocreate the host.

When you have inserted the host a confirmation will appear at the top ofthe page.

Figure 10: Inserted Host Confirmation

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9. Access the Host Management page - List All Hosts again you can see thePinging process and the host name, click on it.

Figure 11: Host Management page with a Host

You will access the Host’s data form but on the left side of the screen youwill find several links, click on Basic Tasks;

Figure 12: Host Management - Host’s form

10. At the new Basic Tasks page choose Upload;

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Figure 13: Basic Tasks

At the new prompt simply click on the Upload Image button;

Figure 14: Upload Image

11. After the image is successfully stored you will have to revert the clonedmachine’s BIOS boot option, from Network, back to the original option(CD/DVD drive, USB Pen, etc.)

8 Assign Image to Host

1. In order to assign the Image to another host or several other hosts (remem-ber that they have to be registered at IPBRICK), you will have to repeatthe insertion process at Host Management and also repeat the BIOS optionprocess of configuring the host(s) BIOS boot options to start first from the

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network (you will have to do this in every machine that will host the newimage you have stored).

Figure 15: BIOS Boot Options

2. Access the FOG’s GUI and click on Host management.

3. This will list all hosts. Select the host(s) you wish to clone with the imageyou created.

Figure 16: All Hosts

4. Click on Host Image, select the image that you created in the previous step.

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Figure 17: Host Management Selecting the image

5. At the new Basic Tasks page choose Deploy;

Figure 18: Basic Tasks

6. Confirm by clicking on the Image All Computers button

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Figure 19: Confirm Task

7. After the host is updated you will have to revert their BIOS boot optionfrom Network back to the original option (CD/DVD drive, USB Pen, etc.)

8. Finally, you will need to change the machine’s name:

• Windows: Right click on My Computer and select Properties;

Figure 20: My Computer - Properties

• Click on Computer Name tab and rename the computer by clicking onthe Change button;

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Figure 21: Computer Name

• At the new window change the computer name.

Figure 22: Computer Rename

• Ubuntu: Open a Konsole and log in as a super user (sudo su)

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Figure 23: sudo su

Edit the file:

vi /etc/hosts

Figure 24: Open the etc-hosts file with the vi editor

Change the host name in the hosts file;

Figure 25: Edit the machine’s name in the Hosts file

• Also edit the vi /etc/hostname file;

Figure 26: Open the hostname file with the vi editor

• Edit the name.

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Figure 27: Name edit

9 Additional Info

Please consult the FOG site for more information:

www.fogproject.org

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