Subhendu Ghosh wrote:
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.
It can :)
mkdir /var/www/html/foo
cobbler buildiso --iso=/var/www/html/foo/kickstart.iso
I just need add the flag for setting what the default is and making the
timeouts variable.
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.
Right now there's some basic code to keep paravirt "-xen" distros from
showing up on the ISO since they have no chance of being bootable.
Though that is a good idea.
Another possibility is to add it as "cobbler profile edit --name=foo ...
--menu=foo" to do submenus, and if we really wanted that. We could allow
--menu=hide as part of that syntax.
-sg
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