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

[Michael DeHaan]

Matt S Unix Administrator wrote:
> Michael DeHaan wrote:
>   
>> 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
>>
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>>     
> I've had this same issue with the timeout, it never counts down.
>
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>   

How do you approach this?     Having the entire data center reboot and 
having to visit menus to boot them would be bad :)

It's not so bad if you don't have the BIOS'es set to PXE first every 
time though ... though it seems that some people do have (or want to 
have) configurations set up that way.   It would be a pretty easy way 
(if not somewhat dangerous way) to reprovision boxes without needing to 
invoke koan.

--MPD