[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler not detecting Arch properly on import

[Michael DeHaan]

Eric Raymond wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have been having an issue with importing to distro from CD/DVD or 
> from an existing repository. When I import an x86_64 distro, pre RHEL 
> 5/CentOS5, etc..it creates a distro/profile for xen-i386.. It seems 
> strange that it would be interpreted as Xen instead of just 64bit. It 
> does install the correct setup when kickstarted, but it seems like a 
> strange occurrence...

When you import a tree, cobbler does a scan against that tree to find 
out what distros are there.   Since Xen paravirt kernels are different, 
they are created as seperate distros.

If you are importing an existing directory, most likely what happened is 
that your directory did not contain a path that explicitly said 
"x86_64", so Cobbler assumed it was i386.  This isn't really a problem 
as you can rename the distribution yourself...  "cobbler profile rename" 
then "cobbler distro rename". 
>
> Also, I was wondering if there is a documented way to setup the distro 
> without importing media, since I currently have a massive 
> repository/tree for my installations, and dont want to add duplicated 
> data on my system.
There are two ways.

One is to use "cobbler import --name=blah --path=blah 
--available-as=nfs://blah:/path/where/blah/is/mounted".  

This will do the same thing as the regular import but will know not to 
mirror the data, which seems especially well suited to your existing 
configuration.
The --available-as must point to the directory that corresponds to what 
was given to path, exactly, as that variable will be inserted into the 
distro object
to indicate where the network install source for that distro is.    This 
can either be an NFS location (as above), or an existing http:// or 
ftp:// location.   Giving
this value allows the variable "$tree" to be interpreted in the 
kickstart file as intended, and getting it wrong will result in a Window 
poping up during install
that indicates the install source was not found.  However, if you do get 
it wrong, it's pretty easy to change later (just do a cobbler distro 
edit and change
the --kopts parameters to reassign 'tree').

The alternative is to do "cobbler distro add" and "cobbler profile add" 
manually, which is a bit less automated, and is the way things were done 
before cobbler
import had the --available-as option. 


>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> et-mgmt-tools mailing list
> et-mgmt-tools at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/et-mgmt-tools