[Ovirt-devel] Re: [internal-et-mgmt] ovirt integration w/ cobbler

[Michael DeHaan]

Hugh O. Brock wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 11:27:06AM -0500, Michael DeHaan wrote:
>   
>> Is there a list/repo for ovirt development?
>>
>> I know the subject of provisioning integration came up, and wanted to know 
>> what I could do to help.
>>
>>     
> Hey Michael. Ovirt list is ovirt-devel at redhat.com -- we are about to
> announce it. virt-devel at redhat.com will also work. Yes, figuring out
> how to do provisioning integration with cobbler is on our list
> although we aren't thinking about it quite yet beyond the level of "we
> need some way to manage images that are pxe-able as well as a directory of
> ISOs." My guess is that cobbler now does this quite well although I am
> not using anything like the current version. Any thoughts you have
> will be much appreciated...
>
> Take care,
> --Hugh
>   

It doesn't do ISOs yet, but that's something that could be added.

It would require some minor cobbler/koan changes.   If someone is 
interested in working with me on that, that's great...
if not, if I can better understand the requirements it should not be 
that complex to add myself.

Basically I'm guessing you want to either do:
(a)  fullvirt provisioning where there is no PXE server, and you can't 
do kernel+initrd installs like koan does now (like Xen FV works on F8)
(b)  non-Linux installs (make koan deploy an arbitrary OS)

Either way it doesn't seem to be hard to add.

Lately I've mostly been working on making sure Cobbler can handle the 
needs of some of the larger install bases -- which is coming along
pretty well.    

One thing that might also be interesting for ovirt is the koan live CD 
... basically it allows you to insert a CD/USB-image into any baremetal 
machine,
boot it, and it will install to whatever cobbler profile you want... 
this can be either a preset profile, e.g. "foo", or can be detected 
based on the MAC
address.   This could be any distro as well, so a F8/F9 based installer 
image could install EL4.   Kinda neat if you need to add new machines
to your "cloud" and ovirt isn't the "official" provisioning server.

Anyhow, let me know more about what features you need, and I'd be glad 
to help.

The APIs are pretty solid at this point -- Virt-Factory was using them, 
Cobbler's web UI is using them now, and I can add anything that isn't there.
Auth is also pluggable now so we can write a module to use whatever 
authentication system ovirt might be using.

--Michael