[et-mgmt-tools] Low priority feature request.. (memtest distro)

[Michael DeHaan]

Dhawal Doshy wrote:
> I am trying to add memtest as one of the distros..
> # cobbler distro add --name=memtest --kernel=/tmp/memtest
> cannot find kernel file
>
> # file /tmp/memtest
> /tmp/memtest: x86 boot sector
>
> A 'real' kernel also lists as a 'x86 boot sector' file..
> # file /var/www/cobbler/images/centos/vmlinuz
> /var/www/cobbler/images/centos/vmlinuz: x86 boot sector
>
> Can this be considered as a low priority feature request?
>
> - dhawal
>
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The file type checking implementation in cobbler currently a bit "lame", 
and looks to see if something has "vmlinuz" in it for kernel names.   
Executing "file" for local files would be smarter.    The one catch here 
is that there are two kinds of initrd files -- CPIO and gzips, so that 
is something to be careful about.   This would involve some small 
changes to util.py.

Another idea -- rather than having a cobbler "memtest" distro (which 
would require a lot of hacking to prevent files being written to 
/var/lib/cobbler and confusing koan), it might be better to have 
cobbler, when writing out the PXE menus, just to create an additional 
PXE menu entry for memtest, possibly adding it to the cobbler package if 
it's not clearly available in another package.  This entry could appear 
last or first in the list, either way.    It defintely wouldn't need to 
be a full fledged distro (with an entry in /var/lib/cobbler/distros, 
etc) as it's not really installable.   This would require changes just 
in action_sync.py

Both of these seem pretty easy to do ... perhaps someone on-list would 
like to submit a patch or two?   Wink, wink, nudge, nudge?

--Michael