CentOS 7

Installing CentOS 7

Configuring partitions for FOG

The one thing with using CentOS 7 (or any red-hat based distro) is that the default partitioning isn't optimal for FOG. The default is that "root" only gets 50 GiB and the rest goes to /home. This is not optimal.

You should delete any existing partitions, and then select "create partitions automatically". This is the easiest. Then you can manipulate and delete unneeded partitions. The most simple partitioning setup for FOG is below:

• Give the swap partition the same amount as the amount of RAM the system has.

• Optionally delete the /home partition or limit it's size to something very small (perhaps 10GB).

• Limit / (root) to 20GB instead of 50 (optional but recommended). Please keep in mind that this is also the partition where the snapins are stored. If you plan to use a lot of snapins and don't think that (roughly) 15GB is enough, then leave this at 50.

• Increase the size of /boot from 500MB to 1GB for breathing room in the future (optional but recommended).

• Finally, create a /images partition with all remaining space.

CentOS (and most Red-Hat based distributions) auto-adjust partition sizes for you if you go over what is available... meaning.. if you are unsure about how much space is left on the drive to assign to /images, you can leave the size field blank and hit "update" and the installer will auto adjust to what is available.

Another thing to keep in mind is when you install on UEFI enabled hardware, there will be an EFI boot partition made automatically - leave that partition alone.

(Note: Video plays in Chrome or Firefox with html5 plugin)

External Video Link:

CentOS 7 FOG Optimal Partitioning

Video:

Continue installation

• Under network settings, set a static IP with Subnet & router info and a name. DNS entries are comma delimited (no spaces).

• Set the timezone (and any preferred NTP servers).

• Start installing.

• Set a root password.

CentOS 7 pre-config

Update CentOS 7

Update everything installed with this line:

yum update -y

Continue pre-config

After installation is complete and reboot is done, you can work through putty from this point forward. You can get a copy here.

• Log in as root with the password you set earlier.

• Configure firewalld:

yum install firewalld -y
systemctl start firewalld
systemctl enable firewalld
for service in http https tftp ftp mysql nfs mountd rpc-bind proxy-dhcp samba; do firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=$service; done
systemctl restart firewalld.service
echo Initial firewalld config done.

• Add firewalld exceptions for DHCP and DNS (if you plan to run DHCP on your FOG server):

for service in dhcp dns; do firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=$service; done
firewall-cmd --reload
echo Additional firewalld config done.

• Set SELinux to permissive on boot by editing /etc/selinux/config

vi /etc/selinux/config

Instructions on using Vi: Vi

Change the line

SELINUX=enforcing

to

SELINUX=permissive

• Set SELinux to permissive on the fly (this is not persistent, the above config must be set to be persistent):

setenforce 0

Setup FOG Trunk

This will install the latest developmental version of FOG using the Git method found here: Upgrade to trunk

We need to use FOG Trunk with CentOS 7 and later because the latest stable release of FOG (currently 1.2.0) does not support any recent versions of CentOS 7.

yum install git -y
cd ~
mkdir git
cd git
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject.git
cd fogproject/bin
./installfog.sh
echo Now you should have fog installed.

• Follow the on-screen instructions to setup fog for your environment. If you are unsure about anything, choose the default option.

Post Config

Set the FOG services to start 30 seconds after boot

Necessary with CentOS 7 & r6551 and above (FOG 1.3.0 is above r6551). There's an issue with the FOGMulticastManager after a reboot; it's timing related.

There are also steps included to delay NFS and RPC for 30 seconds as well, It's timing related also and is needed for very fast servers - doing it on all servers won't hurt.

• Disable FOG services with:

systemctl disable FOG{MulticastManager,Scheduler,SnapinReplicator,ImageReplicator}
systemctl disable nfs-server
systemctl disable rpcbind

Create a startup script with:

vi /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Instructions on using Vi: Vi

• Make that file look like below, exactly. This creates a 30 second delay for starting these services at boot.

#!/bin/bash
sleep 30
systemctl start nfs-server
systemctl start rpcbind
systemctl start FOGMulticastManager
systemctl start FOGScheduler
systemctl start FOGSnapinReplicator
systemctl start FOGImageReplicator
exit 0

• save the file

• Then Run this command to make that file executable:

chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.local