[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler idea: PXE boot profile menu

[Michael DeHaan]

Michael DeHaan wrote:
> Matt S Unix Administrator wrote:
.. snip ...

Allright, so I've got a pretty good prototype of pxelinux menus being 
generated from Cobbler now.   One small problem -- timeouts don't appear 
to count down at all -- or else, they just don't work -- documentation 
is fairly lacking.    The following configuration file (which has been 
generated from cobbler), shows that it will "Automatic boot in X 
seconds", though after this time expires, nothing happens.... what I 
really /need/ to happen is for it fall through to local boot rather than 
hanging around on the menu screen.   Does anyone have any idea how to 
get this last bit working?    This might be my test hardware 
specifically, though I kind of doubt it.

Here's the file...

DEFAULT menu.c32
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE Cobbler | http://cobbler.et.redhat.com
TIMEOUT 200
TOTALTIMEOUT 600
ONTIMEOUT local

LABEL local
       MENU LABEL (local)
       MENU DEFAULT
       LOCALBOOT 0

LABEL fc62895
       kernel /images/fc62895/vmlinuz
       MENU LABEL fc62895
       append ksdevice=eth0 lang= text syslog=192.168.1.99:25150 
devfs=nomount ramdisk_size=16438 append  
initrd=/images/fc62895/initrd.img 
ks=http://192.168.1.99/cobbler_track/kickstarts/fc62895/ks.cfg


I've also tried "ONTIMEOUT LOCALBOOT 0" which also doesn't work, as well 
as leaving off the "ONTIMEOUT" bit and assuming the MENU DEFAULT would 
do the right thing.
 
Provided I can't get this working, there's another decent way to make 
this happen, that is slightly less usable.  That's to set the DEFAULT to 
"local" in the first few lines of the file, and we enable "PROMPT 1".   
Then the user has 20 or so seconds to type "menu" at the pxelinux 
"boot:" prompt, otherwise it would boot locally.  If they type "menu", 
they would get the menu.   It works, but it's not quite obvious.

Anyone have any ideas on how to utilize timeouts and menu.c32 at the 
same time?

Thanks,

--Michael