[et-mgmt-tools] Looping through possibilities in a "snippet"

[Michael DeHaan]

Msquared wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 12:13:46PM -0400, Michael DeHaan wrote:
>
>   
>> Ideally one wouldn't be assigning specific packages to specific systems,
>> as the point of a profile is to make a configuration available to all
>> things that look "like" something. Can you explain your use case for
>> assigning specific packages to specific systems?
>>     
>
> I can: I have two 'workstations' that run on power from a single UPS.
> Only one of them, however, is actually connected to the UPS'
> communications port - the other one talks via TCP/IP to the first to
> determine UPS status.
>
> All workstations have nut-client installed, but only the workstation
> connected to the UPS' communications port has nut installed.
>
> Granted, I could probably have a 'with-ups' profile based on the standard
> workstation profile, but it hardly seems worth it to me.  :-)
>
> Actually, relevant question: If I have a 'workstation-with-ups' profile
> based on a 'workstation' profile, and add packages to the 'workstation'
> profile, will the packages also be automatically added to the
> 'workstation-with-ups' profile?
>   
Currently it's all based on the kickstart template, so there's not 
anything there that explicitly knows what a "package"
is.

If we do implement something like what we've been talking about, you 
could possibly achieve that behavior with something like

%packages
SNIPPET::profile_packages_list
SNIPPET::system_packages_list


And that would source files from
/var/lib/cobbler/snippets/profiles/profile_packages_list/$profile_name
/var/lib/cobbler/snippets/systems/system_packages_list/$system_name

It would also be looking in a few other directories, but as those files 
would not exist, it would not find those.

Would that be workable? It seems cleaner than making Cobbler grok what a 
"package" is, and also tends to work better
when supporting non-kickstart distros (as they could still then utilize 
the expanded template system in a generic way).

(It's also technically possible to have the kickstart detect that the 
kickstart template describes a system and put in some logic into the 
template
to add "nut" for certain systems... so there are lots of ways to do it)

--Michael