Hi

On 30 October 2012 12:58, James Cammarata <jimi@sngx.net> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Gerhardus Geldenhuis
<gerhardus.geldenhuis@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
> I am trying to setup cobbler in the following scenario:
>
> Cobbler server
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Has a "build network" which is non-routable and presented to all boxes
> Has small subnet management network (/27) which is used to access the box
> and do other related management tasks.
>
> Server that are being build
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Servers have access to the build network
> Servers are on there own specific management networks which is not in the
> same vlan as cobbler and with no iphelper installed.

This is a fairly normal, straight forward setup. The only question I
have is, do the servers have constant access to the build network or
is it a VLAN that is switched on only when building the system?

The vlan would be switched off, but we could fix repository pointers by using puppet. We also don't require koan to work since we are more likely to throw away and start again.


> What I would like to happen:
> * The server that is being build should dhcp from the build network
> * The rest of the networking on the server is static and should be set
> statically.
> * The "normal" network aka management networking is vmxnet3 so won't work
> anyway because I am still using RHEL 5.8 for various reasons.
>
> It seems that cobbler assumes it has global access to all networks mentioned
> in server config, is this correct or do I have it wrong?

Cobbler doesn't assume that, but since it serves just about everything
over HTTP/TFTP the IP it is listening on for those services needs to
be routable from the systems you are building. That should not be an
issue if you have the build network presented to all of your servers
as you indicate above. Typically the greatest issue people have here
is with PXE, since DHCP is layer-2 only and can't cross network
boundaries without assistance (namely "ip helper" on cisco hardware).

What I find confusing is the settings in the dhcp template....

subnet 192.168.99.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
     option routers             192.168.99.1;
     option domain-name-servers 10.168.16.10;
     option subnet-mask         255.255.255.0;
     range dynamic-bootp        192.168.99.3 192.168.99.254;
     filename                   "/pxelinux.0";
     default-lease-time         21600;
     max-lease-time             43200;
     next-server                $next_server;
}

I have added a router option but really it is a flat network and 99.1 is the next server and won't act as a router.

How would cobbler set the other interfaces that don't have access to the dhcp server?
ie
eth0=management interface on vlan1
eth1=build vlan99

cobbler server is listening on vlan99 but have not clue about vlan1. When the server is build and vmwaretools is installed then the server would be able to reach vlan1 via routing and firewalls but not during installation.


 

> I assume dhcp tag would come in handy here but not quite sure how to use it.
> The man page makes a cursory mention of it and then refers you to the wiki
> which have no mention of it. Well non easily found.

--
Gerhardus Geldenhuis