[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler Live CD -- success!

[Aaron Lippold]

Hello,

Very cool. So is this outside the Revisor effort or begining results of it?

Aaron

On 7/10/07, Michael DeHaan <mdehaan at redhat.com> wrote:
> Eureka!   I have build and tested a working Cobbler/koan LiveCD.   This
> CD allows for baremetal installation in a PXE-manner, without needing a
> PXE server setup.   So, if you have machines to install/reinstall and
> can't run PXE due to either (A) some software in the way, or (B) an evil
> network admin, this is for you.    This CD also works for any
> distribution, meaning if you have a CD defined to install profile "foo",
> and foo is one day "Fedora 7" and the next day the cobbler server changes
> to Centos 5, it all works, without having to reburn the CD.
>
> This also works with Adam Wolf's recent "autodetect-system" patch.   So
> imagine a lab full of machines where you know the MAC addresses.  You
> stick a CD in one, it finds out the MAC address, and then installs (from
> cobbler) the proper distro for that machine.     You no longer need
> media that matches the target distribution -- one CD works for everything.
>
> - install livecd-tools (I built my CD on Fedora 7)
>    git clone  git://git.fedoraproject.org/git/hosted/livecd
>    make install
>
> - check out the latest koan and build it, as we're going to build that
> into the CD
>    cd /path/to/koan
>    make
>
> - build a LiveCD with the koan parameters of your choice
>    cd /path/to/koanlive
>    build.py --server=bootserver.example.com --koan="--profile=foo"   #
> takes a few minutes
>    # use nautilus, k3b, or your favorite app to burn the koan-live-cd.iso
>
> -- done
>
> This produces a CD that, when inserted into any machine, will provision
> that machine to "foo".   You can pass in any additional arguments you
> like to koan.
> By default, it will add the value you gave for "--server" and
> "--replace-self".
>
> You'll notice that I don't have any CD images up for download.   Why?
> You'll want to pick the koan parameters yourself -- especially the
> server address -- at least
> until we add some zeroconf detection to koan.
>
> Things that should be eventually fixed:
>    The output image needs to be pared down.  Right now it's around 200
> MB.   I think that can be cut in half.
>    CD should run from RAM by default, have a low grub timeout, and
> eject when done to prevent boot-looping.
>          (Right now, log in with root/cobbler, and manually
> eject/reboot ... or just cycle the power and hit the drive button)
>    Third party hardware support could be better (drive discovery)
>    Would be nice to have koan's autodetect-system support be modified
> to also check for known IP's
>
> Note that you should also be able to build a USB-key image of the above
> using "/usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk" -- which is better than burning
> coasters and also more pocketable :)
>
> Comments/questions/ideas?  Fire away.
>
> --Michael DeHaan
>
>
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