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
