Categories
Linux

FOG: Deleting all current active tasks

FOG is “a free computer cloning solution” found at http://www.fogproject.org/. If your a seasoned user you will no doubt have groups setup so you may run commands on multiple machine without loading each one individually. In my scenario we have 1000 machines that need to be imaged, easy, I just created a group with those particular machines (luckily most computers will have a common part of their MAC address so I could search for machines based on manufacturer). Once the group was created I then setup a task for that group to deploy an image.

OK, whoops, this is when you realise that the machines has the wrong image id assigned to them. Easy you think, you created the task as a group you can just as easily delete the active task as a group. No such luck here, what FOG will do to a group of computers is simply setup an individual task for each and every machine in the group. So your only option now is to click delete on each active task, now multiply this out to 1000 machines you have an annoying problem.

There is a simple solution, although a word of warning here “PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP”. All the tasks are contained within the “tasks” table within MySQL. So if you feel comfortable crack open a console connection and open up a console to MySQL.

root@fog:/# mysql -u root
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or g.
Server version: 5.0.67-0ubuntu6.1 (Ubuntu)

Type 'help;' or 'h' for help. Type 'c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> use fog;
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

Database changed
mysql> delete from tasks where taskState = 0;
Query OK, 8 rows affected (0.23 sec)

mysql>

This will delete all the active tasks running on the fog server. However the command files will still exist in the TFTPROOT folder. Exit out from MySQL and change directory into your TFTPROOT folder. Once inside change into the pxelinux.cfg folder.

You will notice several files in this directory, these are the files that control what a machine will do once it is PXE booted. To delete the command files you ONLY have to delete the files starting with “01-“, this is import as the other files will tell the machines what to do when they don’t have any active tasks.

root@fog:/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg# rm 01-*

This will have completely removed all the active tasks.

Categories
VMWare Windows

VMWare vSphere Client on Windows 7 doesn’t work

The latest in a relatively short line of annoyances with the upgrade to Windows 7 is the lack of support for the VMWare vSphere Client.

There are certain things that when it doesn’t work you wouldn’t be surprised. We all have that application that hasn’t been updated in years but we still need to use on a regular basis. I can somewhat understand why these things don’t work within a new operating system. But for something that gets updated on a regular basis to not work, that is a different story altogether and that really annoys me.

Categories
Wordpress

WordPress 2.8 Gripe No. 1 (Indentation Issues)

My first complaint (quite possibly a fault) about WordPress 2.8 is that when using <pre> tags in a post if you switch between the Visual tab and the HTML tab all indent/space formatting is lost.

This is something that worked fine on WordPress 2.7.1 but fails on 2.8, as you can imagine this is a real pain if you are trying to post snippets of code or anything else that requires spaces/tabs for formatting. I am hoping there is a quick fix for this.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.