[et-mgmt-tools] cobbler: right place for custom kickstarts

[Rainer Duffner]

Am 18.12.2007 um 22:31 schrieb Eugene Ventimiglia:

> We're currently using a homebrew system to provision vms for  
> developers,
> and I'm in the process of switching that to cobbler.
>
> I used to keep a giant monolithic /tftboot/pxelinux.cfg/default with
> entries for each os we need to install, ie:
>
> LABEL manager_plain64
>         kernel /bootimages/RH-ES-4.0-U4-AMD64/vmlinuz
>         append initrd=/bootimages/RH-ES-4.0-U4-AMD64/initrd.img \
> ks=http://osserver/profiles/Linux/manager_plain64.cfg
>
> LABEL agent_rh5_vm
>         kernel /bootimages/RH-5.0/vmlinuz
>         append initrd=/bootimages/RH-5.0/initrd.img
> ks=http://osserver/profiles/Linux/build_rh5_agent.cfg
>
> LABEL agent64_rh5_vm
>         kernel /bootimages/RH-5.0-64/vmlinuz
>         append initrd=/bootimages/RH-5.0-64/initrd.img
> ks=http://osserver/profiles/Linux/build_rh5_agent64.cfg
>
> I've played with cobbler for the past day or so, and while I've had
> great success setting of new machines, I havn't been able to figure  
> out
> where to put these custom kickstart files.
>
> I've read the f manual, and it doesn't say either
>


In cobbler, you create a profile referencing a kickstart-template  
(not a complete kickstart-file).
The profile should be as  generic as possible (mine generally just  
select a kickstart-template for now).
Then, when you create new systems, you choose a profile and actually  
fill out the template with data  - I have a very long "ksmeta" line  
(BTW: how can I make the ksmeta-inputfieled larger? Could it be made  
into a textarea?) that does contain all the partitioning and IP- 
addressing.
I couldn't get the "create partition-table with external script"- 
thing to work, so I use ksmeta-variables and different profiles/ 
templates) - it works, too, and our requirements are slightly  
different for each server anyway...

So, you have to distill out what is common in your kickstart-files  
and turn that into one or more kickstart-templates, create different  
profiles for these kickstart-templates (you have to spell-out the  
path on the server to in the input-field, there's no nifty "select  
file" dialogue).
Then, when you create systems, you can specify the details that make- 
up the different systems.

I hope this was clear enough (I'm afraid not) - but it's all in the  
wiki anyway.

My suggestion is to do all pre-production testing in either VMware  
Workstation (or maybe the new Server 2.0 Beta, because of RHEL5- 
support), for the simple fact that you will reboot often - and that  
takes minutes on my blades, compared to 1 second with VMware...
I probably saved hours this way.


cheers,
Rainer
-- 
Rainer Duffner
CISSP, LPI, MCSE
rainer at ultra-secure.de