[et-mgmt-tools] Default Cobbler kickstart_fc6.ks and kernel command line options length

[Michael DeHaan]

Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> Hello list!
>
> I just set up cobbler, and it seems to work fine with ks.cfg from manually installed
> system.
>
> Then I tried to use the default cobbler fc6 ks.cfg (/etc/cobbler/kickstart_fc6.ks)
> but I'm a bit confused about some things.. 
>   
This kickstart in /etc/cobbler is used by the "cobbler import" command 
and is not really intended for use with "profile add". The import
command fills in the template variable for "tree" automatically and 
makes it point to a http:// accessible URL for the kickstart tree. I'm 
betting you
did "cobbler profile add" manually and thus this variable isn't filled in.
> # Use network installation
> url --url=$tree
>
> # If any cobbler repo definitions were referenced in the kickstart profile, include them here.
> $yum_repo_stanza
>
> Those two.. FC6 installation fails and gives errors about those. 
>
>   
I think it most likely gave you an error about the first bit. The second 
bit is templated out automagically by every "cobbler sync", and I doubt 
very much
it would be wrong.

Look in /var/www/cobbler/kickstarts and /var/www/cobbler/kickstarts_sys 
and you will see how these kickstarts are templated out in reality.

If you aren't using "cobbler import" and have added a distro manually, 
you need to supply your own (different) kickstart to --kickstart that
has a non-templated "url" line or otherwise also need to pass in 
--ksmeta="tree=http://server/path/to/install/source" to the "distro add" 
command so
that the $tree variable can be templated out correctly.


> What did I do wrong? I should have specified some parameters when adding the
> profile.. ? 
>
>   
Yes :)
> Then there's another problem.. if I want to give
> "dd=http://some.server.tld/dd.iso" and "updates=http://some.server.tld/updates.img" 
> as a parameters for the installer, the kernel command line will get too
> long, and the parameters get cut and then obviously don't work anymore..
> Anything I can do about this? 
>   
See "cobbler repo add" in the manual for the way to do this. Basically 
you tell cobbler to mirror repositories like "fc6i386updates" and then 
mention the repos you want to attach using the "--repos" argument to 
"cobbler profile add".
Cobbler will template out the kickstarts to be able to use those repos 
during the install process.

As for kernel argument lengths, I've done several things that will yield 
substantially reduced kernel command line lengths in 0.4.4, which I plan 
to release today after a bit more testing.

I'm going to be opening up some Wiki pages soon on et.redhat.com that 
should serve as a good place to save a lot of cobbler examples and 
answers to questions like this.

>
> Thanks!
>
>
> -- Pasi
>
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