What is FOG¶
FOG is a Linux-based, free and open source computer imaging solution for
various versions of Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10), Linux and Mac OS
X. It ties together a few open source tools with a PHP-based web
interface.
FOG doesn't use any boot disks, or CDs; everything is done via TFTP and
PXE. Your PCs boot via PXE and automatically downloads a small linux
client doing all the hard work of imaging your machine.
Also with FOG many network drivers are built into the client's kernel
(vanilla linux), so you don't really need to worry about network
drivers (unless there isn't kernel support for it yet).
FOG also supports putting an image that came from a computer with a 80GB
partition onto a machine with a 40GB hard drive as long as the data is
less than 40GB.
FOG supports multi-casting, meaning that you can image many PCs from the
same stream. So it should be as fast whether you are imaging 1 PC or 20
PCs.
Features¶
FOG is more than just an imaging solution, FOG has grown into an
imaging/cloning and network management solution.
- PXE boot environment (DHCP, iPXE, TFTP, fast HTTP download of big
boot files like kernel and initrd) - Imaging of Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10), Linux and Mac OS X
- Partitions, full disk, multiple disks, resizable, raw
- Snapins to install software and run jobs/scripts on the clients
- Printer management
- Change hostname and join domain
- Track user access on computers, automatic log off and shutdown on
idle timeouts - Anti-Virus
- Disk wiping
- Restore deleted files
- Bad blocks scan
How to run FOG¶
FOG is best implemented on a dedicated server, any spare machine you
have. We recommend that you have sufficient hard drive space. Using a
RAID array allows imaging multiple computers simultaneously without much
performance degradation.
A gigabit network card is recommended. For faster image compression and
decompression, provide as much processor and RAM as you can make
available.
How much does FOG cost?¶
FOG is an Open Source project and licensed under the GPL which means
that you are free to use FOG on as many computers as you like for free.
This also means that if you want to make any changes to the source code
you are free to do so.
The creators of FOG make no profits from this project with the exception
of donations. FOG comes with absolutely NO WARRANTY and the creators of
FOG are in NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS CAUSED BY FOG!
Please see the license file included with the FOG release for more
information. With that being said we attempt to do a very good job of
supporting our users, in fact it is one of the goals of FOG to have
better support than most commercial products. All support requests
should be placed through the FOG's forum which is located at:
https://forums.fogproject.org/
Thanks for supporting open source software and enjoy!
Background¶
Working in an educational environment our organization's techs very
often re-imaged computers in their day to day activities. For a long
time we used a commercial product that in many ways didn't meet our
needs. It wasn't web based, and you needed to create driver disks,
floppys or USB drives. Other things were very difficult, such as
searching for a host by MAC address; and the product was expensive, even
with an educational discount.
So we started to investigate ways in which we could do things better,
and as our organization struggled to make a commercial product work
better by trying to pxe boot dos, and testing it in Windows PE, we, the
FOG Team started to build linux based solution on our own time.
We finally got a working version and decided to release it as open
source since we use many other open source products, and figured we
should give back to the community.