[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler & inherited profiles

[Michael DeHaan]

Aaron Lippold wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is anyone working on the cobbler buildcd profile=x for 0.5.0? I know
> that was talked about and if I can help then I'd like to.
>
> Aaron 

Not yet that I'm aware of.    I still think this would be great and 
you're welcome to start something.   Possibly some way to integrate with 
Revisor (though I'm not sure Revisor will be able to deal with 
RHEL4/5)?    See  http://revisor.fedoraunity.org/

On a related subject -- I did know of one person looking at making a CD 
that would allow syslinux type PXE behavior without the need for DHCP 
blessed next-server, but that effort has apparently stalled.   I still 
think this would be great -- just build a CD image with a hard-coded 
value for the location of the TFTP server ("cobbler build-netboot-cd"), 
which would have the machine go out and PXE itself  without the need for 
PXE BIOS or a DHCP next-server entry.    For instance, if your company 
had a PXE server on your network you didn't like, usage of this CD would 
allow you to install baremetal (using full PXE menus) from your own 
internal cobbler server.   If no one else picks this up, I'll take a 
look at it somewhere down the pipe.

I see there are existing floppy disk images that do this with the DHCP 
portion (for NICs that can't netboot), so all that seems required is 
hacking the DHCP parts out and allowing a config file (or equivalent) to 
specify the /tftpboot server -- so if you're sitting in your lab and 
office, you can network install off of an arbitrary cobbler server from 
bare metal without having to have the Cobbler server be blessed by 
DHCP.    This wouldn't even have to be something Cobbler specific but 
would be insanely useful.

The non-network install CD/DVD thing is useful too.

--Michael