Friday is Free Day – FOG Project

One strenuous task when you’re maintaining Windows-based machines (computer laboratories) is preparing the machines for use. This includes OS and 3rd-party software installation, updating the machines, and tweaking system settings. This really eats up time and is boring.

The task was then eased up with cloning/imaging software. Before, I had to remove hard drives, connect them as slaves to a source computer, and then run a cloning software using a floppy disk. Removing and installing back hard drives is still tedious for me.  Then there was a cloning software that stores and retrieves cloned images via network and uses a disc to boot up a machine(s). Cloning is limited with the number of boot discs you’re using. And then, there’s FOG Project.

FOG is a cloning solution that utilizes the network to store and retrieve cloned images and uses TFTP and PXE to boot machines. Because of this, you can clone multiple machines without any extra cost on discs. It’s Linux-based and is free.

You’ll only have to create a FOG server using Fedora 7+ or Ubuntu. Installation is very easy and straight-forward. After the installation, you can access your server using a web browser. From there, you can manage your machines and tasks. Aside from imaging, you may also use FOG for disk wiping, virus scanning, file recovery and more. A guide/documentation on the implementation is also available from the FOG Project website.

I took a picture of a machine’s screen during the creation of an image from a source computer sent to the FOG server. I’ll try to add the cloning process. More screenshots are found in the FOG Project website.

Saving an image

Download FOG from SourceForge.

Flash Player for Fedora x86_64 Architecture

If you’re using an x86_64 architecture of Fedora, and having problems with Flash player installation for Firefox, follow this quick tutorial.

Flash Player

1. (This is optional) If you’ve tried installing Flash on your system, remove it first. Include nspluginwrapper too.
[root@hostname username]# yum erase flash-plugin nspluginwrapper*

2a. Install the rpm package for 64-bit plugin created by Leigh Scott.
[root@hostname username]# rpm -Uvh http://www.linux-ati-drivers.homecall.co.uk/flash.x86_64/flash-release-1-2.noarch.rpm

2b. You may also download the rpm package and install it from your downloaded directory. Assuming that the file is in your Downloads folder:
[root@hostname username]# rpm -Uvh /home/username/Downloads/flash-release-1-2.noarch.rpm

3. Install the plugin using yum.
[root@hostname username]# yum install flash-plugin

Check if Flash player is installed. This rpm works for Firefox and Opera and from Fedora 12 or newer.

Change Login Screen Image on Fedora 14

I’ve been doing some tweaks on the machine I set up with Fedora 14 (Laughlin) using Gnome. Things were OK until I decided to change the login screen image. I checked System > Preferences but there were no configurations for the login screen. I did a Google search and found a solution that didn’t work for me. I’ve also read from forums that there was no way to change the image unlike the earlier versions of Fedora. I then had this idea of finding the image used as the login screen wallpaper and overwriting it with my preferred image. So I checked the “/usr/share/backgrounds/” directory and found a “laughlin” folder. Inside it is a folder named “default” that contains three other folders named normalish, standard, and wide and a laughlin.xml file. The three folders contained the default login screen image. If you open the xml file with a text editor, you’ll notice that a part of it specifies the path of the Laughlin wallpaper. Wide, Normalish, and Standard specifies the image dimensions. And using this xml file, we can change the login screen image.

Laughlin XML File

Here’s what I did. First, I edited my image three times using the specified dimensions (this is optional) and saved them as PNG files. As root user (doing “su”), I then copied them to the three folders with respect to their dimensions.

[root@machine username]# cp /current/file/location/filename1.png /usr/share/backgrounds/laughlin/default/wide/
[root@machine username]# cp /current/file/location/filename2.png /usr/share/backgrounds/laughlin/default/standard/
[root@machine username]# cp /current/file/location/filename3.png /usr/share/backgrounds/laughlin/default/normalish/

Using vi, edit laughlin.xml and replace the filenames and save the file. See image below.

Edited Laughlin XML File

I logged off and there was my new login screen. I used a random Fedora wallpaper I got from the web. I’m also sorry for the low quality pictures.

Default Login Screen	New Login Screen