Setting up new Cobbler server from existing one
by petermity
If I have an existing Cobbler server all set up, is there an easy
way to copy all of the distros, profiles, and other Cobbler
aspects from it to a freshly created unit?
Could I just copy /etc/cobbler, /var/www/cobbler, and
/var/lib/cobbler to the new machine and then do cobbler sync?
12 years, 8 months
Allow multiple snippets directories
by petermity
Please allow multiple directories to be listed for "snippetsdir".
I like keeping my snippet files separate from the default Cobbler
ones.
Initially I added a symlink from the default snippets directory
to my snippets. But then I have to specify the directory path
for each snippet, and the hierarchy search method for per_profile
etc. doesn't work under that directory.
Then I changed the settings to point to my snippets directory
instead of the default, and copied Cobbler's default snippets to
my directory. Now I don't need to specify a path to snippets,
and the hierarchy works. But then everything is mixed up, and if
Cobbler's snippets change in a later release, it's easy to forget
to update them.
That's why it would be nice to be able to use a PATH or LIB style
method to allow multiple directories to be specified for
snippets. Then they don't need to be mixed up, yet the hierarchy
search could work in all directories.
12 years, 8 months
How to clear "cobbler status"?
by petermity
The "cobbler status" command is handy to see when builds are
running/finished. However, the display can be cluttered by units
that finished building (or hung/failed) days/weeks ago, even if
the Cobbler server is rebooted. Is there a way to start fresh?
Related: is there a wget command or some other method to tell
Cobbler that a failure occurred in the %post section? Something
analogous to the $kickstart_done, maybe a $kickstart_failed?
12 years, 8 months
How to force failure?
by petermity
How can I force a failure on a bad condition, so that "cobbler
profile getks" fails with a traceback (and the actual kickstart
fails, and validateks fails too)?
For instance, I don't want to proceed if some variable is not set:
#if $getVar('myvar','') != ''
# ... do something with $myvar
#else
# Somehow throw an error to abort, e.g.:
#error "The profile must define 'myvar'"
#end if
12 years, 10 months
fetchable_files, boot_files, and VMWare.
by Douglas Kilpatrick
The vmware support patch started using the field "fetchable_files" to
add some files to be copied into /tftpboot by sync. (Well, by a
post-sync trigger, but that's slightly different issue). Unfortunately,
if you're using fetchable_files for the reason I originally envisioned,
the trigger will likely blow up.
I added fetchable_files to handle tftp clients that requested hardcoded
paths. For example, FreeBSDs pxeboot client looks for
"/boot/mfsroot.gz". The fetchable_files support is required to sanely
support multiple versions of FreeBSD.
The VMWare import module uses it differently. It looks like the VMWare
module is using it to list additional files that need to be copied into
/tftpboot to support VMWare, beyond just the two that cobbler already
supports (kernel,initrd).
The VMWare import patch added two triggers: one post sync, the other
post distro-add to copy files in fetchable_files into /tftpboot.
From the perspective of the python tftp server, that's not a problem.
So there are some bad paths in fetchable files: that's ok. We'll just
never check them.
However, the new triggers can't really handle fetchable_files being used
for the original use case. The copy fails.
I think the use case that the VMWare module has is a very rational use
case. I just don't think it's the appropriate use case for
fetchable_files. So I'd like to propose a new field: "boot_files".
I've got a couple of proposed patches on my github tree
(https://github.com/kilpatds/cobbler/commits/master). At the commit
history on the tree, both changes are were made on May 26th.
https://github.com/kilpatds/cobbler/commit/24a531ea4943848598e8774aff408d...
is the change that adds the boot_files field.
https://github.com/kilpatds/cobbler/commit/5b90509288d09bf337c7e14de780f0...
changes the sync/add triggers to use it.
(The change on the 30th refactors things to get rid of the triggers:
move the copy logic over to sync/litesync. But I'm not done testing that)
Comments? Commentary? Requests for "TL;DR" blocks?
Doug
--
Doug Kilpatrick
kilpatds(a)oppositelock.org
12 years, 10 months
include disabled repo?
by Owen Beckley
I'm currently running cobbler 2.0.3 on CentOS 5.
I was wondering if there is an automated way to have a repo included in
cobbler, but have it be disabled by default when it's listed in
/etc/yum.repos.d/cobbler-config.repo.
For example, I would not want it to be listed in $yum_repo_stanza, but
would want it listed in the output of
$yum_config_stanza, but with enabled=0.
Basically, I want to have a repo kept up to date with reposync,
available after an install with "yum --enablerepo=XYZ", but not enabled
during the initial installation.
--
Owen Beckley - owenb(a)foxriver.com
12 years, 11 months
Multihoming issues - SLES
by Daniel Kertby
Hi all,
We have an issue which Im certain that you guys have a clever answer to.
We are using multihoming (multiple VLANs) and today have to do a 'cobbler
system edit .... --server=' for each
added node to have it talking the cobbler server on the correct network.
When we add SLES based profiles we have to specify '--kopts=...install=
http://ip/cobbler/ks_mirror/sles11...' for each profile.
The issues we have are:
* Our default RHEL6 based Cobbler server does not provide a default gateway
to the clients. I don't know how to solve it either.
- See our dhcp.template file below
* Executing 'cobbler system edit...--server=...' updates 'autoyast=...' but
not 'install=...'. Why?
Is there anyway without directly modifying the tftp files to get this
working smoothly?
For our setup, it had helped alot if Cobbler had direct support for
multihoming without gluing it together yourself.
As always, I appreciate the help from you guys...
Rgds,
Daniel
/etc/cobbler/dhcp.template
==================================
ddns-update-style interim;
allow booting;
allow bootp;
ignore client-updates;
set vendorclass = option vendor-class-identifier;
subnet NETWORK netmask NETMASK {
option routers ROUTER_IP;
option domain-name-servers DNS1,DNS2;
option subnet-mask NETMASK;
filename "/pxelinux.0";
default-lease-time 21600;
max-lease-time 43200;
next-server COBBLER_SERVER_IP;
}
...
MORE SUBNET DECLARATIONS
...
#for dhcp_tag in $dhcp_tags.keys():
## group could be subnet if your dhcp tags line up with your subnets
## or really any valid dhcpd.conf construct ... if you only use the
## default dhcp tag in cobbler, the group block can be deleted for a
## flat configuration
# group for Cobbler DHCP tag: $dhcp_tag
group {
#for mac in $dhcp_tags[$dhcp_tag].keys():
#set iface = $dhcp_tags[$dhcp_tag][$mac]
host $iface.name {
hardware ethernet $mac;
#if $iface.ip_address:
fixed-address $iface.ip_address;
#end if
#if $iface.hostname:
option host-name "$iface.hostname";
#end if
#if $iface.subnet:
option subnet-mask $iface.subnet;
#end if
#if $iface.gateway:
option routers $iface.gateway;
#end if
filename "$iface.filename";
## Cobbler defaults to $next_server, but some users
## may like to use $iface.system.server for proxied setups
##next-server $next_server;
##Next-server $iface.next_server;
}
#end for
}
#end for
==================================
12 years, 11 months
non-LVM partitions in KS
by Tim Dunphy
Hello list!!
I would like to create VMs using cobbler/ks that do not use LVM partitions.
This is the kickstart I am attempting to use,
--------------
install
- ## use mirror to install
url --url http://mirror.trouble-free.net/centos/5.6/os/x86_64/
- ## partitioning experiment
clearpart --all
lang en_US.UTF-8
network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp --hostname snjhnew
rootpw --iscrypted $default_password_crypted
firewall --enabled --port=22:tcp,80:tcp
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
selinux --disabled
timezone America/New_York
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=xvda --append="console=xvc0"
part /boot --fstype ext3 --ondisk=sda --size 300
part / --fstype ext3 --ondisk=sda --size 25000
part swap --size 2048 --ondisk=sda
part /var --fstype ext3 --ondisk=sda --size 2000
part /tmp --fstype ext3 --ondisk=sda --size 2000
part /scratch --fstype ext3 --ondisk=sda --size 1 --grow
%post
%packages
@base
@core
@editors
@legacy-network-server
@mail-server
@network-server
@server-cfg
@text-internet
@web-server
keyutils
and this is the result it prodces:
root@new-host-8 ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
3.8G 1004M 2.6G 28% /
/dev/xvda1 99M 14M 81M 15% /boot
tmpfs 256M 0 256M 0% /dev/shm
Can I ask how I might be able to achieve the desired result of not
using LVM partitions?
Thanks
tim
--
GPG me!!
gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys F186197B
12 years, 11 months
Cobbler + SLES + CDATA script fails
by Daniel Kertby
Hi all,
We are running Cobbler version 2.0.11 and tries to reuse autoyast XML files
for SLES installations.
If we have a embedded [CDATA[ script containing variable assignments like,
variablename=$(ls)
variablename2=$((othervariable + 1))
, the web server throws an ERROR 500.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 500 SERVER ERROR
2011-05-30 10:44:05 ERROR 500: SERVER ERROR.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is this a known bug? Any workaround without hacking the embedded script?
Regards,
Daniel
12 years, 11 months
Cobbler 2.0.11-2
by Scott Henson
Some may have noticed that the Cobbler 2.0.11-1 release did not have a
change log update in the spec file. This release fixes that.
--
Scott Henson
Red Hat CIS Operator
WVU Alum BSAE/BSME
12 years, 11 months
