[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler manpage and guest names

[Michael DeHaan]

Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> Hi,
> 	Just noticed that there are two copies of cobbler.pod in the git
> repo ... I went on a little chase trying to figure out why koan isn't
> using the virt-name arg described in the toplevel copy.
>   

I'll chase this down...

> 	Incidentally, am I missing something or is there no way to specify a
> guest name other than its MAC address?
>   

cobbler system names are (mainly due to a side-effect of having to deal 
with PXE-ness elsewhere) MAC addresses.    We used
to support them being something else (IPs, valid hostnames), but MAC 
addresses work best.    However, these are PXE related requirements?
Should they affect virt?  Not really.

As a quick aside, I think most people are installing virt from a 
per-profile basis ....

koan --virt --profile=nameOfProfile --server=cobbler.example.com

Currently, though, these virtual machines aren't created as 
"nameOfProfile", "nameOfProfile1", and so on, but they are created as 
MAC addresses.
I think they really should be named after the profile.    Originally we 
did something like this with "--virt-name", but this was redundant.  The 
profile already
has a name, and that's why this was pulled.    

When a cobbler system is provisioned, however....

koan --virt --system=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --server=cobbler.example.com

It makes sense (to me anyway) to go ahead and use the MAC address.

virt-factory (http://virt-factory.et.redhat.com), for instance, is using 
MAC addresses with explicit provisioning of systems (not profiles) for 
virtual domain names
such that they remain unique when migrating between systems.

Bottom line -- yes, I think using the profile name as a basis for 
machines provisioned from koan would be a very very good idea.   It 
would make things a lot more
readable when viewed by other tools, and it would be easier to tell what 
the purpose of a given virtual machine was.


> Cheers,
> Mark.
>
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