[et-mgmt-tools] multi-os howto?

[Michael DeHaan]

Dhawal Doshy wrote:
> Top posting, oops, and i just read the other thread.. "Cobbler idea: 
> PXE boot profile menu".
>
> What we do is more/less detailed here if you want a link:
> http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_pxe_install_server
>
> - dhawal
>
> Dhawal Doshy wrote:
>> Hello Michael and List,
>>
>> i recently started testing cobbler for my setup and quite like the ease
>> of provisioning.
>>
>> Here is what i have done so far..
>> cobbler distro add --name=rhel4 --kernel=/path/to/vmlinuz
>> --initrd=/path/to/initrd.img
>>
>> cobbler profile add --name=rhel4_ni --distro=rhel4
>> --kickstart=http://192.168.1.5/ks.cfg
>>
>> cobbler profile add --name=rhel4_interactive --distro=rhel4
>> --kickstart=http://192.168.1.5/ks_custom_part.cfg
>> ....
>> ....
>> same for centos
>>
>> However each of these creates a /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/distro and not
>> /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default. In the production setup i have the
>> 'default' file being updated manually with different labels to support
>> multiple OSes.. and a Display file to present the options at the boot:
>> prompt.
>>
>> My question is how do it do this using cobbler?
>>
>> - dhawal
>
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If you are interested, cobbler can keep a MAC address database in 
cobbler so the systems will PXE boot to what they are supposed to be 
when they do not have an OS on them, based on the MAC address.    This 
makes the defaults file unneccessary.

cobbler system add --name=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:EE --profile=fc5i386dbserver
cobbler system add --name=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --profile=fc5i386webserver

I will definitely add the menus though as that appears to be a very 
common hosting use case.

OT, but I would also suggest starting to reference your kickstart files 
on the local system (i.e. --kickstart=/path/to/file) as that way you can 
start taking advantage of cobbler's kickstart templating features should 
you want to use them later.   However what you are doing is fine if you 
don't need that just yet.

As for Ubuntu, it's pretty cool to see this:  
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KickstartCompatibility, which seems to 
imply you can do fully automatic installs from Cobbler without changing 
anything.   Awesome.

--MPD