[et-mgmt-tools] Installing without PXE, and without the live CD -- "cobbler buildiso"

[Aaron Lippold]

Hi Michael,

This is a great feature! Thanks for putting the work in on this. I am
working on the apache lockdown items for my organization and look forward to
building a "Live Provisioning CD" that meets our requirements.

Thanks again!

Yours,

Aaron

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:29 AM, Michael DeHaan <mdehaan at redhat.com> wrote:

> For a while Cobbler has had a solution based on koan and the live CD to
> enable network provisioning of bare metal in environments that either do not
> have DHCP, or do not have control over DHCP that is sufficient enough to set
> up a PXE environment.  Naturally, if you can set up a PXE environment with
> Cobbler, it's very useful to have, and you'll want it.
>
> So, along came the live CD.
>
> The live CD was built using a recent Fedora, and it had the magic ability
> to install any distro -- /except/ you had to use Fedora to build the Live
> CD, and the build process was slow, and the live image was a bit bigger than
> it needed to be.   However, due to driver constraints, it didn't always
> support the latest in storage technology -- that was a problem.
>
> We have finally implemented the low-tech solution, thanks to various folks
> in Red Hat GPS, and some hacking I've done to integrate that closer into
> cobbler.
>
> Using 0.9.X or later (it's checked in now into the git "devel" branch) you
> can do:
>
>   cobbler buildiso [--iso=] [--tempdir=] [--profiles=]
>
> This will automatically generate an ISO that allows for menus just like
> Cobbler's PXE boot menus, for installing new systems.  I also plan to allow
> a configurable default profile for those who want to mass deploy this image
> using remote management processors, etc.
>
> The menu will contain an entry for each bare metal bootable profile, with
> the current data set in Cobbler.    Given that Cobbler now generates
> kickstarts in real time, changes to the kickstart templates can be made
> without reburning the CD!
>
> Again, the live CD is more dynamic, but this is much smaller, faster, and
> easier to build.
> The one thing the live CD still offers is simulation of the MAC address
> detection feature of PXE, but if you don't need to use cobbler system
> records to provision your lab/datacenter/etc, this will also get you there
> -- and is probably the perfect fit if the Live CD was not working out for
> you.
>
> Test release will be available soon, git is available now.
>
> --Michael
>
>
>
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