[et-mgmt-tools] Using cobbler to mirror repos like updates/extras -- further information

[Demetri Mouratis]

On 2/23/07, Michael DeHaan <mdehaan at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> What we have here is a failure to communicate :)
>
> Two kinds of mirrors, basically. Different concepts, used for different
> things.
>
> "cobbler import" puts files into /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror -- this is a
> kickstart tree mirror. These don't need to be updated, and are essential
> for doing full automated installations. However since Anaconda /does/
> allow network installs, you don't /have/ to mirror them on your cobbler
> server if you already have a good kickstart tree available over http on
> your network. In this case, you'd just use "cobbler distro add", and
> save yourself the import steps. However, most home users won't have an
> fast kickstart tree available to them, and this is why cobbler import
> helps you make one.
>
> cobbler repo add ... puts files into /var/www/cobbler/repo_mirror --
> these are yum repositories for things like extras & updates. These
> update quite frequently and are entirely optional for cobbler -- if you
> don't use them, it will use external repos as configured by default in yum.
>
<snippage>

Hi Michael,

I have two requirements, one is a kickstart tree mirror for my base
OS, CentOS 4.4.  The second requirement is for a repo mirror of a yum
repository hosting my companies software setup to be fetched and
installed by yum.  For the sake of simplicity, I'd like to use repo
mirroring for both.

As you say above, and I had a surprisingly hard time seeing this, the
kickstart tree does not strictly need to be updated.  However, is
there any harm in doing so?  I haven't gone the extra step of changing
the /etc/yum.repos.d/* configurations on my target hosts to use my
kickstart server as the source for updates but I am considering it.
In this case, does it make sense to just start with repo mirroring,
treating a repo mirror as a superset of kickstart tree mirroring, and
have both the OS and in-house code treated the same in cobbler?

Thanks.