Category: IGEL OS

By Fredrik Brattstig @virtualbrat

21 April 2023
IGEL just released IGEL OS 12 and the COSMOS platform. Maybe IGEL OS is new to you, and you want to test-drive without setting up the complete solution. Maybe you want to learn how to configure IGEL OS in the way that I do in my day-to-day work life?

To get going quickly with IGEL OS 12, first of all, you will need to download the installer, which can be found HERE

Select the option that best describes your use case, eg. are you a customer and want to download the IGEL OS Creator, or are you a partner helping a customer. Fill out the form, AND MAKE SURE YOU SELECT IGEL OS 12 (lower right corner of the form), then validate your e-mail address in the email you received, which will take you to this page:

Click “Download IGEL OS” to start downloading the IGEL OS 12 Creator!
When the “osc_12.01.110.1.zip” is downloaded, use your favorite tool to extract the file. Within the extracted files, you will find a .iso file, that you burn to a USB stick using your preferred USB imaging tool. Either you use the provided preparestick.exe. Personally, I always use Balena Etcher.

Now that you have your bootable installer, insert the USB stick into your test device, and boot from the USB stick. Please consider that you will re-image the disk while installing IGEL OS 12, if you want to revert your machine after testing, that will be a manual task.
Follow the wizard to install IGEL OS 12 (The IGEL OS 12 installation is generally next, next finish type of installer. Here you have an IGEL KB article describing the procedure:
https://kb.igel.com/howtocosmos/en/installing-the-base-system-via-igel-os-creator-osc-77865870.html

IF you do not want to re-image the machine, you can use this guide on how to create your own UD Pocket, the homemade UD Pocket can then be used to boot your device with IGEL OS without touching the existing installation:
https://virtualbrat.com/2020/03/19/igel-ud-pockets-for-everyone/

Awesome, now you have IGEL OS 12 installed and you are ready to boot for the first time!
The first boot of IGEL OS 12, will start with an on-boarding wizard that will guide you to the initial configuration. It’s a super easy task where you in the start select what user interface language you want to use, and what keyboard layout you prefer. The next screen will ask you to read and accept the IGEL OS 12 License Agreement.
The third step is to select if you want to allow automatic detection of your current time zone, to make sure that the clock and date of your IGEL OS 12 device are correct, thus leading to a smoother experience when it comes to certificate security. Maybe you will need to connect to a wireless network if no functional internet connection is found, IGEL OS 12 will guide you to get connected.
When this is done, you will be presented with the option to onboard your IGEL OS 12 device, we will skip the two pages that will try to guide you through this process. For the sake of it. When you have setup the IGEL COSMOS platform, you will be able to very easily onboard your IGEL OS 12 device by using cloud idP or IGEL Cloud Gateway, but that is outside of the scope of this article.
When you have skipped the two onboarding pages, you will have the possibility to register your installation of IGEL OS, which will also give you the benefit of running IGEL OS unrestricted for 90 days. Fill out the form completely to retrieve your test license.
Great! The first boot wizard is done, your IGEL OS 12 device reboots and will take you to the IGEL OS desktop.

Now, in the lower-left corner of the screen you will see four icons:

Click the one to the right to open up the IGEL OS App Portal and you will be presented with a view like this:

Within the IGEL App Portal, you can browse through the selections of apps, and directly install apps to your IGEL OS endpoint. If an app has specific dependencies, the installation will take care of installing those automatically, isn’t that awesome??!
Now you can build up your IGEL OS the way you want it, nothing more, nothing less. As you can see in the IGEL App Portal, you can select what version of the individual apps, to get a match to your environment.

I’m quite sure that you managed to get some apps installed, you can install multiple before rebooting your IGEL OS 12 endpoint.

There is also a command line utility to install applications from the IGEL App Portal. I’m generally using this way to install my applications, maybe I should modernize my way of working, but I do like it this way 🙂
To enable installation of IGEL OS 12 apps, the command line tool is named IGEL Package Control where the command to install, etc is igelpkgctl
(igelpkgctl –help for syntax explanation)

igelpkgctl list #will show you a list of available applications in the IGEL App Portal 

Ok, so now we have a list of what is available to be installed. We will pick the IGEL Azure Virtual Desktop client and get it installed on your IGEL OS 12 device:

igelpkgctl install avd #this command will install the latest IGEL AVD client, and it's dependencies

According to the above list of available applications, let’s say that you want to install an older version of Citrix Workspace App, this can be done by specifying the complete application name in the syntax:

igelpkgctl install cwa-22.9.21+2 #Will install a older CWA based on your selection, including it's dependencies

Perfect! Now we have built the IGEL OS 12 operating system and added the apps for your needs. Reboot your machine to enable the applications!
To configure your application settings, you can now open IGEL Setup to make the desired configurations, click on the third icon from the left and the below window will open, click on Apps in the Setup navigation, expand your apps, and follow the configuration pages.

Now we have apps installed, we have configured our sessions. We are good to GO! Welcome to IGEL OS 12!

BTW, if you need to install a root certificate to be able to connect to your resources signed by your own PKI, here is how it could be done. I have put my root certificate in a web server as a downloadable file, this is an easy way for me to get a hold of the needed root certificate when on the road. I use a local terminal or I switch over to the console using Ctrl+Alt+F12 and type the following commands:

mkdir /wfs/ca-certs/ #creates the ca-certs folder in /wfs/, certs here will be added to the system at system boot
cd /wfs/ca-certs/ #cgange directory to /wfs/ca-certs/
wget http://fqdn.to.webserver/certificatefilename.extension #downloads the cert, eg. http://file.virtualbrat.com/CARoot.crt

I think this small guide will help you to understand, and master to manage your IGEL OS 12 endpoint test-drive and will let you be successful in your endeavors. Hope you found it useful!
Oh, by the way, I recorded a video, where I do most of the tasks above, have a look!

Welcome to IGEL OS 12!
Stay Tuned, more stuff is around the corner!
/Fred