Michael DeHaan wrote:
For a while Cobbler has had a solution based on koan and the live CD to
enable network provisioning of bare metal in environments that either do
not have DHCP, or do not have control over DHCP that is sufficient
enough to set up a PXE environment. Naturally, if you can set up a PXE
environment with Cobbler, it's very useful to have, and you'll want it.
So, along came the live CD.
The live CD was built using a recent Fedora, and it had the magic
ability to install any distro -- /except/ you had to use Fedora to build
the Live CD, and the build process was slow, and the live image was a
bit bigger than it needed to be. However, due to driver constraints,
it didn't always support the latest in storage technology -- that was a
problem.
We have finally implemented the low-tech solution, thanks to various
folks in Red Hat GPS, and some hacking I've done to integrate that
closer into cobbler.
Using 0.9.X or later (it's checked in now into the git "devel" branch)
you can do:
cobbler buildiso [--iso=] [--tempdir=] [--profiles=]
This will automatically generate an ISO that allows for menus just like
Cobbler's PXE boot menus, for installing new systems. I also plan to
allow a configurable default profile for those who want to mass deploy
this image using remote management processors, etc.
The menu will contain an entry for each bare metal bootable profile,
with the current data set in Cobbler. Given that Cobbler now
generates kickstarts in real time, changes to the kickstart templates
can be made without reburning the CD!
Again, the live CD is more dynamic, but this is much smaller, faster,
and easier to build.
The one thing the live CD still offers is simulation of the MAC address
detection feature of PXE, but if you don't need to use cobbler system
records to provision your lab/datacenter/etc, this will also get you
there -- and is probably the perfect fit if the Live CD was not working
out for you.
Test release will be available soon, git is available now.
--Michael
If the iso(s) can be made available through the web infrastructure, and
accessible via a predefined or calculated path, then a external rules engine
could drive the provisioning process through the remote management
processors's virtual media capabilities.
Perhaps the profiles module could be extended to define whether a iso should
be generated or not. An easy way to automatically generate boot isos.
-sg
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Red Hat Summit Boston | June 18-20, 2008
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