[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler query (and now Xen too)

[Chris Sarginson]

Hi Michael,

I forgot about the sub profiles being able to override things like that, 
so thats a (good) alternate way of doing things, thanks.

I have a couple of other queries:

1) When using the xen kernel to do the installation, I assume that is 
not doing hardware virtualisation at all?
2) When not using the xen kernel to do the installation (which I can do 
if I create the VM manually) I get the following error:

xend.err "Error creating domain: (2, 'Invalid kernel', 
'xc_dom_find_loader: no loader found

3) When using the xen kernel to start the VM I get the following error:

xend.err "Boot loader didn't return any data!

4) Are there plans to further expand cobbler to allow you to select the 
number of virtual CPU's available?

Chris

Michael DeHaan wrote:

> The idea is that a profile should represent what the system does and 
> is... the kickstart file, the RAM requirements, the disk requirements, 
> and so forth -- to keep all of those things together to make a 
> configuration like "virtual-webserver" completely reproducible and 
> consistant.     In the end, that might even make there be less to 
> configure, as you wouldn't need to create the per-system records.  An 
> example of this is a development or test environment -- that profile 
> might be rolled out an arbitrary number of times, and you wouldn't 
> neccessarily want to require a cobbler record for every instance of that 
> environment.  You'd just use koan with "--virt" and 
> "--profile=development-environ".  Now, in an environment where you need 
> DHCP reservations, then yes, you'd want the per-system records.  
> How many profiles is insane, by the way?  :)  One thing that we have in 
> Cobbler that is intended to help make this more manageable are the 
> concept of inherited profiles.
> 
> The idea is that you could do:
>    cobbler profile add  --name=webserver-base ....  --distro=blah
>    cobbler profile add --name=webserver-base-moreram --virt-ram=1024 
> --inherit=webserver-base
> 
> So, if you want to modify the profile "webserver-base" it would make 
> changes to all of the subprofiles for you.   That may help.
> 
> koan does offer some local overrides, --virt-name, --virt-disk, 
> --virt-bridge ... though we try to keep those minimal since it's 
> supposed to be a central management way
> of doing things.    Those are there for those folks who want to take 
> advantage of a cobbler server outside of their normal working 
> environment -- for instance, a standalone
> box outside of a datacenter needs to install a cobbler profile, but the 
> default image location does not suit the environment, etc.
> 
> Anyhow, let me know if the inherited profiles might work for you ... if 
> not, we can think about whether per-system overrides of everything in 
> the profile object
> is a good idea or not.   I'm willing to remove those restrictions if 
> enough folks find them valuable, though I still think profiles (and 
> sub-profiles) are a very meaningful
> abstraction.   For Web UI uses, we may even leave those overrides under 
> an "advanced" tab or something of the like, to still encourage creation 
> of task-specific
> profiles.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> --Michael
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> et-mgmt-tools mailing list
> et-mgmt-tools at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/et-mgmt-tools

-- 
Kind regards

Chris Sarginson
Technical Support
UKFast.Net Ltd

(t) 0870 111 8866
(f) 0870 458 4545

"The UK's Best Hosting Provider" ISPA Awards 2007, 2006 and 2005

Dedicated Servers - Managed Hosting - Domain Names- http://www.ukfast.net

UKFast.Net Ltd, City Tower, Piccadilly Plaza, Manchester, M1 4BT
Registered in England. Number 384 5616