ssx4life

Before Fog 0.29 you could auto register the systems through the fog client service. This feature has been removed for some reason. Please just pxe boot the system and register it once =) The client service will do the rest and match what ever you have set.

correctly. All computers are tied to the mac address. If you reimage a host and have a different name for the machine the hostnamechanger.dll in the fog client will compare that against the database and update it for you. Check the mac address of the computer against your current computers and update it to what you want.

Yea this is hard coded, and is a frustrating one at that. The theory behind the wait time is for the machine to power up and finish any post installation jobs before it continues on. But agreed the 5 min wait time adds a big delay in the overall imaging time. You can over-ride this by going into the fog folder on the machine and changing the .ini file to a lower time. Or recompile the snapinclient.dll for checkin time - https://sourceforge.net/projects/freeghost/forums/forum/716419/topic/3720462

Hey localzuk, i've crept out of the shadows here to reply to you. =) Any time I see posts on SFX Maker or Fog I tend to come out of hiding lol... You can create a single payload for CS3 and or remove parts of it based off of your usage. All you need to do is customize the .xml for each separate install and bundle it with SFX Maker. Just remember to stay within your proper licensing. I've run into issues where someone didn't have a site license for Office 2007 and decided to make an installer with sfx maker which went great, he just had to manually activate the software each time he pushed it, or had a seperate job for each license key. Let me know if you need more help or have any questions.

Mine is around 6-7GB but then again mine is just a slim base image. I push all software via GPO or snapins.

agreed... not only does the VM allow for more security and flexability... but it also does things such as NIC bonding to reduce overhead.

So I realized that my video editing software sucks.... Time to go look at the new version of Vegas or CS5 Premiere. More coming soon. if you are looking for a proof of concept I've got a youtube link from awhile back showing netbootdisk pxebooting off fog and mapping a drive. I could have gone one step further and had it auto execute norton ghost / acronis / or run a dos utility such as seagate seatools - I'll get more documentation shortly on this... just as soon as I get a video editing and production that fits my needs (a.k.a. doesn't look like crap)

I know it doesn't make much sense to have a storage note on a remote site for only 1 pc, so I can see the appeal for having fog on a flash key that is bootable or some method of imaging a system remotely or standalone. One thing that you COULD do as a cheap workaround is to capture the image with clonezilla and have a portable version of fog that way. (not ideal again but still works). As long as your captured image is sysprepped and includes the fog client service the computer can still be imaged, remotely registered (though vpn or any other service), renamed, etc. **edit** I'm assuming your remote sites share some sort of MPLS or VPN capabilities that communicate with your main location either though DMZ or the default gateway (aka they can see your fog server)

Correct. NetBoot via pxe to map a network drive that executes ghost. Either with complete automation or with end user input (depending on what you want)

I posted this over on the Sourceforge forums, but I thought that those who don't read the fog forums might also want to check this out. There have been requests from people asking me to provide more detail on how you can PXE boot dos based applications such as Ghost / Acronis / or testing tools such as Dell Diagnostics or DBAN. Follow link - SourceForge.net: FOG - A Free Cloning Solution: Topic: Documentation time! Still working on a good enough video for public viewing on how to make Norton Ghost play nice with FOG (it involves netbooting / mapping a share / and launching the app via the pxe menu) More to come, and let me know if you have any questions or comments... I already appended the wiki and KB articles to reflect the changes, and also included more info on snapins.

second vote for steady state as a free alternative. Personally I hate any frozen OS software in the production setup. The reason being is that if your Active Directory is properly configured you can implement good GPO settings to remove issues you commonly run into.

I believe that version .30 they are looking into a live feature. at least i saw an .iso for a live version of fog on sourcefourge a few weeks ago. no idea in the short term though.

yea Fog really does play best in a VM setting. This allows you to quickly and easily move the system from one computer to another and also do tasks such as link network cards and bonding across Vlan's. =)

personally it sounds like you had some hidden data left on the drive, this happens from time to time. Always make sure you run dban and or any other zero write application to the drive (like the vendors own apps which are free as well) Seen this happen as well, just make sure that you wipe em first =)

actually that's not correct 100% Fog correlates the computer name based off the mac address. You could have sysprep do dmi information such as %Serial Number% or any other DMI fields. By doing so it could install with the CORRECT name on it being imaged, and then register it though the fog service. **This method is only used if you want to bypass PXE booting the unit** YMMV, so do it how you want. Either PXE boot and register... or don't and DMI it.

This is a great guide for using driverpacks - COE Exchange: Imaging Windows Machines with Sysprep Decent guide too... I use about 90% of it and 10% of my own.

Good start, but I think for the community base you need a bit more detail in your documentation. Do you mind editing this document for the wiki and or KB articles on the FOG project page?

If you need help making a customized XP disk let me know, I've worked with the driverpack community for some time. To answer your question.... you want a Windows XP Disk (preferred to be slipstreamed with SP3) and download the DP_BASE. Download just the mass storage drivers (put others in there if you want I suppose, but they are not needed). For the mass storage drivers make sure you check the box that says TEXT MODE. The rest should be seamless. Lemme know if ya need more pointers. --ssx--

Please perform a zero write to the drive in question before imaging it. If the computer has a hidden partition and or a bad sector you will run into issues you mentioned. Please also look into the manufacturers HDD diagnostics to perform a full test (seagate / maxtor / hitachi / WD / etc.) you can also perform a zero write though their software most times. p.s. I perfer dban to do my zero write and data security - Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

I've always had issues with SIS network cards when it comes to Linux. Please go though the driver troubleshooting on the fog forums first (the output of the config is what we need to get started) - FOGUserGuide - FOGProject Wiki You can also request the NIC to be added to the kernel development (ask on the fog forums after you get the lspci -k output)

year? make? model? bios settings? what nic? Have you tried a different HDD (different make / model) in the unit? Have you gone though the driver troubleshooting yet? The driver troubleshooting can be found on the user guide.

Crap.... my nice long response got axed.... Let me give you the .02 cent version. #1. Run the files remotely with psexec - PsExec #2. Run them with SFX Maker ( I prefer this method) - iSoft Online :: Home of SFXMaker (basically you encapsulate them) FOG has issues with batch / cmd files being remotely executed due to the way windows permissions handles the running of these files (running them locally with local credentials vs. remote) Let me know if you need more help.

Fog has active directory integration built into the fog client. You can also achieve this without using the fog client by doing a runonce command via sysprep. The best bet (or ideal) for this is to do the following Computer is imaged #1 Sysprep has the "auto log in as administrator" field activated (for xp) #2 system runs a .vbs or batch script to change the computer name to the service tag / serial # / or mac # (I prefer to name them based off of one of these 3 things #3 system reboots #4 system auto logs in again (a 2nd time) and runs a script to add it to the domain Hope this helps... =)

I do know that for open sourced applications such as Firefox / open office we could make a community repository for Fog that lets you download the files directly and run them as snapins. Something I've though of doing for awhile, just comes down to time.... something that I always seem to be short of . Let me know if you need more help, I'm always willing to give my opinion (granted it's not always right..... but no one ever is) ^_^ lemme know i've also thought about going 1 step further with having a website (drupal based) that does something similar to what autopatcher was forced to do when vendor's got mad at users re-distributing their file(s) in different formats (M$ comes to mind here) Select your vendor Select the software package Select what you want it to do (silent with status / fully silent / etc.) System will then download the package off the vendors site / ftp to the users desktop and include the needed .mst or command line switches. Something that could be done fairly easily, but i'm not the best at C# programming. If we get enough of a community drive I'm sure it's possible (hell anything is possible with enough push)

to be more specific.... you may need MSI repackagers (which can cost money depending on the tool used) Hope I pointed you in the right direction.