{"id":447,"date":"2015-02-21T04:19:33","date_gmt":"2015-02-21T04:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/?p=447"},"modified":"2023-12-13T18:19:32","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T18:19:32","slug":"if-you-dont-fog-you-are-nuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/2015\/02\/21\/if-you-dont-fog-you-are-nuts\/","title":{"rendered":"If you don’t FOG, you are nuts!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<![CDATA[\"FOG
\nFOG stands for Free Open-Source Ghost<\/a>.\u00a0 I used to use Ghost, purchased before I came to NTLS, but I refused to spend the amount required for the new version.\u00a0 I have used FOG <\/a>for some time, and frankly is was very useful.\u00a0 We use version 0.32 to clone drives in our tech room.\u00a0 We utilize old Gateway laptops with external USB drive docks<\/a> to easily drop drives in, image, and replace back in machines.\u00a0 We had tried the new version of FOG but went back to 0.32 when the new version was incompatible with external USB drive connections (tried several.)\u00a0 We were content with our usage.<\/p>\n

Last week,\u00a0 I attended the OETC Conference<\/a> and found out how underutilized our implementation truly was.\u00a0 We went to a FOG session hosted by Casey Ailiff from Kent City School District and Chris Carman of Roosevelt High School.\u00a0 I humbly give credit for the changes we made and everything that follows, to them.<\/p>\n

FOG 1.20 can be hosted from a centralized location virtual server, easily setup and deployed on a Ubuntu 12.04<\/a> (my favorite currently) VM in about an hour. The installation is easy and fairly detailed on their webpage. The problem is that in the past I had simply installed FOG and used it right out of the box with no additional configurations.
\nThe first thing I found I needed was to connect FOG to my active directory.\u00a0 FOG will automatically rename and join newly imaged system IF this step is taken.\u00a0 This is actually pretty simple.\u00a0 The first step is to make a new account on the AD that you will set and forget.\u00a0 This user has to have permissions to join systems to the AD.\u00a0 The password should be complex.\u00a0 You will put the password into the FOG Crypt program that is found by clicking the FOG Client\/FOG Prep link<\/a> which is at the bottom of every FOG page.\u00a0 This link takes you to the page<\/a> that you can download Fog Crypt.\u00a0 This program you put the AD password into and it converts it into the string you then put into the AD configuration page in FOG<\/a>.\u00a0 This is one of the most important parts of maximizing FOG.\u00a0 Don’t skip it!<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 next step is to prepare your image.\u00a0 Use the smallest drive in your inventory and make sure you format the drive with a single partition before you install Windows 7.\u00a0 Windows 7 by default makes a 100Mb partition that ruins one of the benefits of FOG.\u00a0 By using a single partition image and your smallest drive (ours is a 60Gb SSD) then the image will fit on any other drive and FOG will automatically expand it to the full size of the drive when it installs.\u00a0 We install Windows, do all the updates, install all our core software, and install the FOG Client Service.\u00a0 We actually put everything on this image that any teacher or HS\/MS student would need.\u00a0 It uses 28Gb on the drive.\u00a0 It is now our core image.\u00a0 We then sysprep our image by copying the unattend.xml<\/a> file and prepit.bat<\/a> into the windows\\system32\\sysprep directory.\u00a0 Then click on prepit.bat and it will sysprep and shut down.\u00a0 We used the file that we got at the OETC class and referenced it to make our Windows 7 Enterprise version. \u00a0 Yes there is a product key there, but it is the KMS one.
\nSo now we can FOG to any Intel based PC in our district.\u00a0 We made another version with all the elementary school software and sysprepped that for the elementary school.\u00a0 Two images….pretty cool.\u00a0 We will probably end up with a few more, but not as many as the 20+ we used to have.\u00a0 But we aren’t finished yet.<\/p>\n

The next step is to setup your machines to PXE Boot first and register them with the FOG server.\u00a0 This entails hitting the down key three times when it boots<\/a>, selecting Perform Full Host Registration, and letting the system boot into the FOG system.\u00a0 The first thing it will ask is the system name.\u00a0 You simply need to enter the name and hit enter about 8 times to get in on the system.\u00a0 You can take the extra time to select an associated image, but it is easier to associate that on the FOG Webpage.\u00a0 My students accomplish this task around the district after watching this flipped video<\/a>.
\nAfter that you can do the rest from the FOG Webpage<\/a>.\u00a0 The first time we cast an image we had the system all configured and the new lab up in about an hour.\u00a0 Those new systems now all have the FOG Service which allows you to do alot<\/a>, including sending a new image without ever going down to the room.\u00a0 If you enable the renaming service<\/a>, and have the\u00a0 Active Directory Join after Image Task<\/a> checked, it will rename and join on its own.
\nAbout this point I was really geeking out.\u00a0 In two days I had every lab in the district redone, and the hard part was making the images and remembering everything.\u00a0\u00a0 I used to Image systems every year, and recently I was stretched to every two or three.\u00a0 Now every time I want to do a major upgrade, or just clean off all the student user accounts, I can re-image them in a flash.\u00a0 There are alot of extra things you can accomplish with the FOG services, and I am just touching on a few of them.\u00a0 I encourage any IT department to install FOG, play with all the options it provides, and appreciate how much this open-source program improves your school or business.
\nThanks Casey and Chris!
\nResources from my Apr 2015 Ohio Technology Summit Presentation\u00a0 can be found here<\/a>.
\nFOG version 1.4.4 Changes<\/strong>
\nThe one change that affected us with the upgrade was the fact that the new FOG service breaks a sysprepped image.\u00a0 The workaround is fairly simple.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Disable the FOGService in the PC services.<\/li>\n
  2. Drop a file in C:\\Windows\\Setup\\scripts\\SetupComplete.cmd<\/span>\n
      \n
    1. The text inside this file is as follows.\u00a0 It will reactivate FOGService when the sysprep is complete.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      sc config FOGService start= auto\r\nshutdown -t 0 -r<\/pre>\n
      ]]><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
      <![CDATA[ FOG stands for Free Open-Source Ghost.\u00a0 I used to use Ghost, purchased before I came to NTLS, but I refused to spend the amount required for the new version.\u00a0 I have used FOG for some time, and frankly is was very useful.\u00a0 We use version 0.32 to clone drives in our tech room.\u00a0 We … Continue reading If you don’t FOG, you are nuts!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edtechteach","category-tech-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3889,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/3889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.nationaltrail.k12.oh.us\/ittech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}