[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler, findks.cgi, registration, and so forth

[Peter Wright]

Michael DeHaan wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
<snip>
>
> The idea -- all kickstart requests through cobbler will now go through 
> a cgi (or more likely, a new mod python piece for performance reasons) 
> that will serve up the kickstart file for all cobbler-hosted kickstart 
> files.    Then, we have the configuration ability to automatically add 
> new system objects (correctly configured to the proper profile) when 
> they get installed.   Since we are also doing this via a web script, 
> we can also decide to re-evaluate the templates at runtime, 
> effectively eliminating the need for "cobbler sync" for anything but 
> regenerating DNS/DHCP.
>
> For an example of the registration case -- if you tftpboot 500 new 
> systems ("straight off the truck"), and you use the PXE menu to assign 
> some to "webservers" and some to "dbservers", this reorganization of 
> how we do things would allow us to auto-create system records, 
> correctly assigned to the profile they were assigned to, with the MAC 
> data already filled in.
>
this would be very helpful indeed. 

although i suspect having to manually select your install via a menu can 
get painful when lighting up a bunch of blade systems - if i read this 
correctly. 

we've been kicking around the idea of polling MAC addresses from our 
edge switches then having some glue code enter those addy's into cobbler 
and assign them a specific profile (we usually find ourselves putting 
all of our render nodes for example on their own edge switch so we don't 
have to worry about mixed use profiles in the use case).

don't get me wrong though - auto-reg would be huge :)

-p

-- 
Peter Wright
Systems Engineer
Sony Pictures Imageworks
wright at imageworks.com
www.imageworks.com