Kickstart and roles

[Michael DeHaan]

David Lutterkort wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 22:47 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
>   
>> So I've been kicking around this idea for a while and wanted to see
>> what others thought.  Who knows maybe someone will be interested in
>> helping.
>>     
>
> More than interested. That's actually right down the road me and some
> others have been thinking lately.
>
>   
>> This may already exist so if it does please let me know but I would
>> like to setup a bunch of kickstart scripts for server and workstation
>> roles using only official Fedora software.  For example, lets say
>> someone wants a xen workstation.  We could setup a kickstart script
>> with everything they need, only the minimals and at the end, yum
>> update, configure what we can and on reboot, that user has a working
>> xen machine.
>>     
>
> We are working on a tool to simplify the very basics of keeping track of
> provisioning setup, both for bare-metal and domU provisioing. Our focus
> so far has been on the mechanics of keeping kernel/initrd/ks.cfg on a
> central server and using PXE boot (for bare-metal) and a separate script
> (for domU) to start the provisioning. It's just a tad early to inflict
> this on the world, but we'll make a prototype available in the next week
> or two. For domU's, the idea is that it should be easy to publish
> special-purpose kickstart files and use them with the tool.
>   

Seeing I'm the one writing this puppy, I'll chime in briefly.   David 
is, of course, right on -- including the part about inflictions! 

The basics are that in the end PXE provisioning is ultimately very 
similar to Xen provisioning, and we're creating a tool to allow both to 
be  simultaneously or independently managed from a central boot 
server.   At first, this will likely be a command line tool (with an 
optionally hand-editable config file), though we may see GTK interfaces 
later.  

Ultimately, this should allow a new bare-metal machine to be easily PXE 
provisioned to be a Xen host, and then from the kickstart for that 
machine, any number of domU images can be automatically installed (and 
provisioned with their own kickstarts, in turn, if neccessary) in one 
pass.   So things like "make this machine a Xen workstation with these 2 
specific Xen guests" will be possible -- with a minimal amount of 
kickstart hacking.  

Advanced configuration of services though things like puppet is 
something I'm excited about, as it's a step beyond kickstarts.   
Ultimately I'd like to see kickstart creation and system setup 
demystified as much as possible.  Handrolling of custom boot/provision 
solutions is always going to occur, but it needs to be easier.   Minimal 
kickstarts followed up by "make it so, number 1" orders ultimately make 
it less work for SA's for automated deployments/rollouts.   Some 
integration with or evolution of yam is also likely a good add.  In 
general, I like the minimal install ideas Mike points out as well.

Comments definitely welcome.

--Michael DeHaan