-----Original Message-----
From: cobbler-bounces(a)lists.fedorahosted.org [mailto:cobbler-
bounces(a)lists.fedorahosted.org] On Behalf Of Michael DeHaan
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 4:56 PM
To: cobbler mailing list
Subject: Re: Open Roadmap Discussion for 1.5/1.6
>
> 2. Better baremetal building support without every connecting a
keyboard
> (i.e. I order the systems with PXE boot set). I see this mentioned
in
> ticket 301. I don't know that the specific implementation suggested
> would be best - it would be best not to have any sort of "install"
be
> the default, but if we can find a way of easily registering MAC
> addresses for assignment to profiles that would be very helpful.
>
https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/ticket/301
>
Thinking aloud, this could possibly be done with a special option
added
to koan and a kickstart that does that and then reboots in %pre
before
any further installation occurs. This could be done using any
installer kernel/initrd as a basis.
(Adding and calling a koan --register, basically)
Sound workable? The underlying mechanics would be quite trivial.
That sounds reasonable in some cases, although keep in mind that we (as
in the users, not just me) won't always be using koan, but will
sometimes be using pxe booting. Would it be possible to have the system
boot up under pxe, report it's MAC (possibly with other useful info like
cpu(s) speed, mem amount, hd's, etc. to help identify the hardware),
then enter a holding pattern until it receives a message back from the
cobbler server saying it's been assigned an IP/profile or whatever? If
you want it to be really slick you could then have it reboot using a
RAMDISK-loaded Koan (if that's even possible - the reason being that
many servers have an option to pxe boot from the keyboard, but it would
be nice to only have to hit that once) and install. At the server end
of things it would be nice to have some sort of utility you could run
that would report unassigned MAC addresses and other identifying info
and allow you to assign them. The next step would then be to hook this
up to the webUI.
Hope this is helpful. Thanks for the support and continued development
effort.
-Jared