Michael DeHaan wrote:
Cobbler 0.4.0 is out. RPMs are already up on et.redhat.com and will
be pushed out to the mirrors shortly.
The main feature for this release is support for PXE menus. For
those wanting to use PXE menus, the best thing to do is set all
machines in your datacenter/lab to "PXE first". To access the PXE
menu, type "menu" at the prompt, otherwise cobbler will fall through
to local boot in 20 seconds. If you have a cobbler definition made
for a system, that system will bypass the PXE menu. This is true
whether you have a certain MAC set to a specific profile (ex: cobbler
system add --name=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF ...) or if you have a "default"
system entry (cobbler system add --name=default --profile=blah). If
you have a default system entry and want to use the new menus, just
run "cobbler system delete --name=default" and then "cobbler sync".
Presto, you've got PXE menus. This is also documented in the manpage.
As mentioned previously on the list, I'm also reinstating the usage of
Cheetah for vastly improved kickstart templating. See
http://www.cheetahtemplate.org/learn for more information. Basically
the existing kickstart templating is now improved with the ability to
do if-statements and the like. Cobbler will allow either
TEMPLATE::foo or $foo for kickstart templating substitution. The one
thing I've found is that a macro such as $(list-hard-drives) does need
to be escaped to \$(list-hard-drives) in kickstart files. Things
like passwords (crypted passwords often contain "$") don't need to be
escaped and are otherwise fine. If you do escape them though, it
won't hurt. The new /etc/cobbler/kickstart* files have them
escaped. If you have your own kickstart files, it would be worth
checking for any dollarsigns that were unescaped, or you might see an
error next time you run "cobbler sync".
This release also no longer requires running "cobbler sync" after
"profile add" or "system add" commands as much as cobbler used to.
Editing configuration files behind the scenes, or wanting to
regenerate PXE menus will, however, still require running "cobbler
sync". The features made to minimize the need for sync were mainly
done for applications using cobbler as a provisioning library and
those users that occasionally forget to run sync and post questions to
the list :)
I've also incorporated some random minor bugfixes, including passing
"--basedir" to createrepo and manpage fixes related to the
"--local-filename" option as mentioned last week.
Questions? Comments? Fire away.
--Michael
RHEL4/Centos users:
Apparently menu.c32 (required for PXE menus) isn't provided by the
syslinux package on RHEL4... I'll probably end up bundling it and
storing it in /var/lib/cobbler.
For now, you can copy it yourself to /usr/lib/syslinux/menu.c32 and
things will work fine. I'll release a 0.4.1 fix that will bundle this
file shortly.
