Installation

Requirements

Before diving right into the installation of FOG you need to decide which server OS you are going to use. FOG is made to install on RedHat based distro CentOS, Fedora, RHEL amongst others as well as Debian, Ubuntu and Arch Linux. Choose whichever you like most and have knowledge about! FOG is known to work with any of the above noted systems. Many installation manuals are available.

This listing is for informational purposes only, as the required components will be automatically downloaded and installed by the FOG installation script: PHP 5/7, MySql 5+/MariaDB 10+, Apache 2+, DHCP (pretty much any!), TFTP, FTP, NFS

The LAMP setup can also be easily adjusted for a "WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) system" though will require a bit more knowledge of what packages to use and how to integrate with the FOG system.

Please choose the distribution you have the most knowledge about, but the below list has the best support in FOG 1.3.0 right now. This list is by no means an absolute list to follow, though.

Ubuntu 16 or higher

Debian 8 or higher

CentOS 7 or higher

Red Hat 6 or higher

Fedora 22 or higher

Any version of Arch.

Download FOG

Please see: Getting_FOG

Installer

The FOG installer comes as a complex shell script that will handle all the package installs and configuring the services for you. It must be run as root (sudo works as well) to be able to set things up properly. Running the installer on a new system for the first time it will ask you a couple of questions regarding your network configuration and services you want to install.

Modes

FOG can be installed in two different modes. First is the normal FOG server which does all of the work. Choose this option if you only want have a single FOG server in your network. The second option is to install a FOG storage node which will serve as a second place to store images on and serve images to more clients (when doing unicast). Here you can find some more information about the two modes.

  FOG Server installation modes:
      * Normal Server: (Choice N) 
          This is the typical installation type and
          will install all FOG components for you on this
          machine.  Pick this option if you are unsure what to pick.

      * Storage Node: (Choice S)
          This install mode will only install the software required
          to make this server act as a node in a storage group

Command line options

The FOG installer has quite a few command line options. See the output below. You might want force FOG to setup the web interface via HTTPS, change the default PXE boot file or web root directory.

./installfog.sh --help
...
 * Found FOG Settings from previous install at: /opt/fog/.fogsettings
 * Performing upgrade using these settings


  Starting Debian based Installation


Usage: ./installfog.sh [-h?dEUuHSCKYXT] [-f <filename>]
		[-D </directory/to/document/root/>] [-c <sslPath>]
		[-W <webroot/to/fog/after/docroot/>] [-B </backup/path/>]
		[-s <192.168.1.10>] [-e <192.168.1.254>] [-b <undionly.kpxe>]
	-h -? --help			Display this info
	-d    --no-defaults		Don't guess defaults
	-U    --no-upgrade		Don't attempt to upgrade
	-H    --no-htmldoc		No htmldoc, means no PDFs
	-S    --force-https		Force HTTPS redirect
	-C    --recreate-CA		Recreate the CA Keys
	-K    --recreate-keys		Recreate the SSL Keys
	-Y -y --autoaccept		Auto accept defaults and install
	-f    --file			Use different update file
	-c    --ssl-file		Specify the ssl path
	               				defaults to /opt/fog/snapins/ssl
	-D    --docroot			Specify the Apache Docroot for fog
	               				defaults to OS DocumentRoot
	-W    --webroot			Specify the web root url want fog to use
	            				(E.G. http://127.0.0.1/fog,
	            				      http://127.0.0.1/)
	            				Defaults to /fog/
	-B    --backuppath		Specify the backup path
	      --uninstall		Uninstall FOG
	-s    --startrange		DHCP Start range
	-e    --endrange		DHCP End range
	-b    --bootfile		DHCP Boot file
	-E    --no-exportbuild		Skip building nfs file
	-X    --exitFail		Do not exit if item fails
	-T    --no-tftpbuild		Do not rebuild the tftpd config file
	-P    --no-pxedefault		Do not overwrite pxe default file

.fogsettings

Full article on the .fogsettings file can be found here: .fogsettings

Backups

TBD

Errorlog

TBD

Installation manuals

CentOS

CentOS 7, CentOS 6.4 (CentOS 6.5 also works), CentOS 5.3 (CentOS 5.4 & 5.5 also covered)

Debian

Debian 8, Debian Wheezy, Debian Squeeze, Debian Lenny

Fedora

Fedora 25 Server, Fedora 24 Server, Fedora 23 Server, Fedora 21 Server, Fedora 13, Fedora 8,

RHEL

TBA

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 16.04 Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 11.04, Ubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 7.10

Virtualization

FOG can be used on bare metal as well as in most virtual server and client setups. Some of the virtualization techniques are really great when used with FOG, e.g. snapshots. Some people use virtualization to prepare and capture their "golden (master / reference) images" all on one central location/server. Again like with the server OS we don't prefer any of the following or others that are out there. This is only a collection of hints and tricks plus maybe issues we know about.

Hyper-V

Using the New VM Wizard:

Ensure the virtual switch your VM is connected to has a route to FOG!

Create VM Wizard > Installation Options: Select "Install an operating system from network-based installation server"

Existing VM:

Ensure the virtual switch your VM is connected to has a route to FOG!

Right click VM > Settings > BIOS

Move "Network Adapter" (sometimes labeled "Legacy Network Adapter") to the top of the boot order.

UEFI:

UEFI/Secure Boot is an option with Hyper-V on Server 2012 on Generation 2 VMs. It is enabled by default, and can be disabled in VM Settings -> Firmware: Uncheck secure boot.

Thanks to moses

KVM/QEMU

Can be used as kind of a lightweight desktop virtual environment to test FOG and master your images. Using this on the laptop as local test environment. Search forums and wiki but there is no valuable information about anyone using FOG on a KVM server. Asked user mxc as he seams to use it. Otherwise this will be a brief description on how to use this as I do it.

# setup network tap device as kind of a local software switch to connect it all
sudo tunctl -t tap0 -u <username>
sudo ifconfig tap0 x.x.x.x netmask 255.255.255.0 up

# generate disk image file
qemu-img create -f qcow2 hd.qcow2 10G

# start VM using QEMU emulator (BIOS mode)
qemu -m 512 -boot n -net nic,vlan=1 -net tap,vlan=1,ifname=tap0,script=/bin/true -hda hd.qcow2

# start VM using real KVM virtualization (BIOS mode)
kvm -m 512 -boot n -net nic,vlan=1,macaddr=00:00:00:00:00:05 -net tap,vlan=1,ifname=tap0,script=/bin/true -hda hd.qcow2

# start VM as UEFI machine - as well using the more modern '-netdev' parameter
kvm -m 512 -boot n -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=hn0 -netdev tap,id=hn0,ifname=tap0,script=/bin/true -hda hd.qcow2

OpenVZ

OpenVZ (possibly within Proxmox) is mostly used to run the FOG server in a light weight kind of virtual environment. As OpenVZ is in nature similar to a chrooted environment you cannot actually PXE boot such a container. To install FOG as a server in OpenVZ you need to have NFS support on the host machine first and then add it to the container as well:

$ lsmod | grep nfsd
nfsd                  312315  14
$ grep nfsd /proc/filesystems
nodev   nfsd

If you don't see the kernel module nfsd loaded you might need to install the nfs-kernel-server package and load the module (usually done by the nfs-kernel-server init script). As mentioned before you need to enable access to nfsd from within the container you want to install FOG to:

$ vzctl stop $CONTAINER_ID
$ vzctl set $CONTAINER_ID --feature  nfsd:on --save
$ vzctl start $CONTAINER_ID

After that the installer should run through like it would installing on bare metal or any other virtual environment!

Wake on LAN:

To be able to send WOL and multicast packages the container needs a proper MAC address. This is only the case if you configure the container to use a network bridge (veth instead of venet!).

LXC

LXC (used in Proxmox for example) does need some manual configuration tweek - reference:

Option 1 - Disable Apparmor:
- Edit the container configuration file and add the line lxc.aa_profile: unconfined.
- On Proxmox the configuration file is located at /etc/pve/lxc/CTID.conf, where CTID is the ID number of the container.
Option 2 - Edit Apparmor profile to allows NFS:
- Open /etc/apparmor.d/lxc/lxc-default-cgns and add the nfs/rpc lines:

# Do not load this file.  Rather, load /etc/apparmor.d/lxc-containers, which
# will source all profiles under /etc/apparmor.d/lxc

profile lxc-container-default-cgns flags=(attach_disconnected,mediate_deleted) {
  #include <abstractions/lxc/container-base>

  # the container may never be allowed to mount devpts.  If it does, it
  # will remount the host's devpts.  We could allow it to do it with
  # the newinstance option (but, right now, we don't).
  deny mount fstype=devpts,
  mount fstype=cgroup -> /sys/fs/cgroup/**,
  mount fstype=nfs*,
  mount fstype=rpc_pipefs,
}

Reload Apparmor:

apparmor_parser -r /etc/apparmor.d/lxc-containers

Important: The latest Proxmox update (around 23th of October 2018) broke NFS in LXC containers. Find a fix here: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/mounting-nfs-in-lxc-not-working-since-latest-update.47815/

VirtualBox

Bridged network, host only. Older versions have (PXE?) bug - Tom knows about that.

Have we seen this issue in the FOG forums yet? http://forum.ipxe.org/showthread.php?tid=7864

VMWare ESXi

Running a FOG client within an ESXi server is pretty close to what you would do on a bare metal machine:

Create VM as normal.
Choose network adapter other than VMX3 (e.g. e1000) as we have seen loading issues with those virtual adapters.
Open VM Console, start up the VM. Press F2 on Boot Logo to enter BIOS.
Scroll over to boot tab, use + key to move Network boot to the top of the boot order.

You can also do an on-demand network boot by hitting F9 on startup, if you don’t want to change the boot order permanently.

UEFI:

UEFI is disabled by default for VMs in ESXI 6.0+. To enable it for a VM, go to VM Settings > Options Tab > Advanced: Boot Options and change the boot firmware from BIOS to EFI.

Thanks to moses