[et-mgmt-tools] re: "invalid kernel" -- found the problem!

[Rainer Duffner]

Am 04.02.2008 um 22:00 schrieb Michael DeHaan:

> Rainer Duffner wrote:
>>
>> Am 04.02.2008 um 21:27 schrieb JimmyT _:
>>
>>> I told you what we changed .... a new box, with a fresh download,  
>>> and
>>> a vanilla install.
>>>
>>> Based on your reposnse, it's clear the perception is that "it's us".
>>>
>>> Fair enough. We'll stick to supported products.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Do physical installs work?
>> It works here, basically out-of-the-box.
>>
>> Sometimes, though, the RPC-XML interface can get "cobbled" and  
>> I've got to restart httpd+cobblerd.
>> Haven't figured out why, though.
>
> Development cobbler from git (0.7.X, 0.8 candidate) has some  
> logging updates that also include much better remote exception  
> handling, so stay tuned for that, I suspect that should go away. I  
> haven't seen any issues with cobblerd from the development build  
> which I've been running in a /long/ time. I do recall some issues  
> with cobblerd in previous releases.


It's not very often.
Maybe also was only in the vmware-image I tested this all with...


>
>>
>> I really wish I had something like cobbler for my FreeBSD- 
>> installations.
>
> I'm not sure I've mentioned that to you yet or not (I know I have  
> some other folks) --
>
> Cobbler already has support in there to do SuSE/Debian type  
> installs (they take an answer file, even if it's not technically a  
> kickstart). If there's an easy enough way to adapt
> the code (mainly action_sync.py and item_distro.py) to grok the BSD  
> differences, I'd be willing to take incorporate it. Honestly I'm  
> not all that familiar with what it takes to
> network install BSDs -- patches definitely welcome though.


The problem is, that FreeBSD doesn't use pxelinux to boot - it has  
its own PXE-bootloader.
Then, the equivalent of the ks.cfg file goes into the compressed  
msfroot filesystem image, which would be a major pain to adapt.
It also likes to work via FTP only (all the example scripts have NFS  
commented out and setup FTP instead - as if everybody had tried and  
then settled for the obvious.

I must look at that at some point - there's a howto about converting  
a FreeBSD-ISO for PXE-booting with pxelinux here: http:// 
phaq.phunsites.net/?s=pxe




>
>> There's a lot I don't like about Linux - but RHELs kickstart +  
>> cobbler works _very_ well.
>
>> And I really get better "support" from Michael et.al. via IRC/ML  
>> than I get from other, wanna-be vendors via a paid contract.
>>
> Glad to hear that. Thanks!
>>
>>


Credit where credit is due ;-)


cheers,
Rainer
-- 
Rainer Duffner
CISSP, LPI, MCSE
rainer at ultra-secure.de