morganw

The reimaging task is just about getting the image on the drive, the hostname changing and domain join are handled by the service. There isn't any interaction between the two. If you install the service on a PC that is out of the domain, and the FOG database has the Active Directory settings set for that host then it will attempt to join. You can watch the log file on the host as the service starts and check the behaviour, it's totally independent.

The group functionailty is only used to modify settings on more than one host, the hosts will never inherit any settings from a group. If you add a new host into your group now, the AD settings will not be updated on that host, any snapins that were assigned to that group will not be assigned to that host etc. I did put in a feature request the group function be changed to actually push settings onto new hosts in a group but that maybe too big a change to implement. I just let them appear in the 'Computers' container and move them when the workstation is built, on a rebuild they'll be in the right place. So unless you rename things often or are setting up new computers you don't have to touch it.

You could try it with the domain administrator account just to test if it is a permissons thing. ...and if you look at the active directory settings on a per host basis it's all spelt correctly in the form domain\username? not domain\\username or domainusername?

Are you sure you are using the password encryptor and the account you are using has permissions to add the computer object to AD?

I can't remember exactly, I did see once when trying to install the ActivStudio MSI via a .cmd file using the same method, I think it was something like COMPUTER\localuser or COMPUTER\localsystem as the ActivStudio installer thought it was an actual user and was trying to copy things into it's profile. Which reg keys are you trying to set? Don't suppose it's getting stopped by a software restriction policy or anything like that? The easiest way to escalate your privledges slightly is to use something like a 7zip SFX installer (the way ssx4life sets up all of his stuff). I've only had to do this on about 4 or 5 things out of about 100 though. Had to adjust antivirus settings as well when doing this as NOD32 thinks that a silent SFX installer is dangerous (obviously could be if it wasn't yours). Again I don't know the exact user that it's running with, but I can testify that it works.

Like he said.

The netdom stuff isn't required anymore, the service was rewritten so it will join the domain by itself. This thread has most of the issues you'll encounter.

...and interesting there is bug if you populate the AD settings through a FOG group which will remove the backslash, so DOMAIN\username becomes DOMAINusername.

How the computer object acts under a rebuild will be governed by the permissions that have been delegated to account used to Join Active Directory. If it has permission to create / delete workstations then a workstation rebuild with FOG doesn't require any manual intervention to rejoin the domain with a new SID. If the workstation name has been changed then you can use the OU paramater within FOG to default workstations to somewhere other than the default computer container.

A few teachers here have customised some boardworks powerpoints and then give the files to students to look through at home (not sure if the license even covers this), this includes some of the flash based drag'n'drop activities that you get in Boardworks. I'm now being told that for some students the flash activities are not running. I imagine if they are opening them at home in something like OpenOffice it wouldn't work, but does anyone know if there are any problems with the newer versions (>2003) of MS Office? I know macro security will stop them running but if it's a home computer it would just prompt to allow the content to run wouldn't it?

Get the sid for a user with this: $userSID= (Get-QADUser -service 'DC.domain.com' -samaccountname $username).sid If you don't specify '-service' it will just use any domain controller

Yeah I use two kernels. I've found I had more success sticking with an old one from about two years ago, then if something didn't work make a per host exception to use the latest FOG supplied kernel instead. It might also be worth checking that you haven't got a 120mb of recovery or diagnostic partiton left on the drive.

It's good that it's possible but I wouldn't relish the thought of reworking the code every time there is an update, although at the moment they are infrequent. Another complication might be that things like the service settings may require different values on different sites, and at the the moment parts of the service doesn't play nicely with Windows 7. If all your sites are identical it might be worth a go. The only other way I can think of doing it would be to run the main fog server as a VM on each site that is scripted to shutdown and syncronise it's disk images on request over the WAN - so you maintain one, then push it onto the remote sites. If one site needs exceptional settings then you start maintaining two VMs. Could be pretty fast using a delta transfer. Like you say though, if WDS is doing the business I'd be inclined to stick with what works.

I think this would work in theory in terms of how the images would move around. You would make one storage group per remote site and just keep the central FOG server at your location. The master node for each storage group would sync to the other slave storage nodes and they would all be located at the remote site so no bandwidth issues there. I think that to get an image from you to the remote master node you would have to use cp to copy the image across, otherwise you would have to instruct someone at the remote site to do the upload for you - maybe what you want but I imagine not. http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/images/7/79/StorageGroups.jpg I think what may cause a problem is that I'm pretty sure the PXE boot process, imaging progress information, FOG service, and generally anything that references the database will want to speak to the main FOG server. You maybe could handle this through some kind of routing configuration across the WAN and I wouldn't expect there to be masses of traffic. Could be worth testing at least, but defintely not straight forward.

I don't suppose it's a VM that you could snapshot? You can dump the SQL database and take a copy of any snapins and images that you have and restore them to another installation if if all goes wrong. Is this actual in production use or are you just trying it out? When you say the password is scrambled what exactly do you mean? When ever you type a password in it won't show it on screen, I'm using IE and it shows up as dots. You could try using another browser and seeing if you have the same issue, maybe just an issue with the character encoding of your browser.

The default username is "fog" The default password is "password" Have you changed this or is this an existing installation that is broken? If you can get to the user management section in the web interface you can reset the password. There are also two levels of account, one that has full control and one that doesn't, maybe worth checking that is on the correct setting.

Do you mean the web interface is asking you for a password or the PXE boot menu?

Did this with Iceberg instead. Seems much more straight forward.

I do it in the same way with USBDLM and user based software restrictions policies. Important to remember that the number of driver letter you configure using USBDLM must be at least equal to the maximum number of USB ports that your computers have. If you've set up 3, then the 4th memory stick that is inserted will not be covered by restriction. Also watch out for built-in card readers using USBDLM drive letters.

I'm using DeployStudio to create an automate build sequence for OS X 10.6 but I can't get the wireless profile to be automatically be configured. According to the DeployStudio forums I need to create a package to run the command rather than just run it as a normal script. DeployStudio Forum / Automatically Join Wireless Network I can't find any documentation or examples on how to do this, most references are for really old versions of the PackageMaker applcation which doesn't resemble the new one. Could anyone point me in the right direction?

You don't need Windows support tools any more, the latest version of the Fog service was rewritten to work without it.

If you uncheck the join AD option for the host, then reimage to the point where the computer has renamed and is logged in, can you manually join the domain at this point? You could also try a different hostname incase it's too long or has illegal character.

I've got one of these as well and have the same issue, I use FOG and I can't PXE boot through this switch. I've also tried the latest firmware. I guess I'll have to call 3com support at some point but haven't got around to it yet.

You could use the free version of Alike to backup one physical Xenserver machine to one physical backup machine, if you register you can do multiple physical Xenserver machines to a single backup machine. The backup is based on a snapshot so there isn't any down time and has block level de-duplication to only store changes. When combined with a file system level backup just for home folders and shared storage this should cover everything from massive failure of a Xenserver host through to Joe User deleting something he shouldn't have and wanting it restored.

If you are using GoogleApps and wanted something neat and simple you make the entire thing in Google Sites and have it hosted with Google. Doing it this way also makes it easy to delegate responsibility for the pages out to other people as you give permissions based on their account (which must already exist if you are using GoogleDocs / Gmail). The editor is basic but neat, and you can embed a few types of objects into the pages.