Matthew Barr wrote:
I was going back through older mail and found this. We expect to
build
a bunch of new boxes in the next few months, and I'd love to have an
easy way to add their mac's to Cobbler. We also have other boxes that
aren't in cobbler yet, that would be handy to be able to run a koan
command to add the MACs to a specific profile.
The base tool might be as simple as a koan option to register a new
profile. So workflow would be:
Hmm, registration in koan is an easier first pass indeed. Then we could
just invoke koan's registration hooks via the live CD for round 2.
PXE boot. loads a quick shell to enter the name of machine, and the
IP. That adds the the new system record and reboots to kick the system
via a koan --replace-self.
So basically it would also need to have a few options to go interactive
for those few variables?
I presume your use case is static or otherwise with DHCP reservations?
We couldn't reboot into an install unless we also prompt for the
profile, which we could do.
Also, it seems like it would also want to ask for the name, but it could
query for the mac. Some users might not want to have to enter in the IP.
Seems like it might be nice and easy, and despite needing a keyboard
attached at 1st power on, there would not be any typing of MAC
addresses. If you had a pattern for names, you could generate the
name, and IPs, and such things off a single line entry, scripted by
the end user.
We key off the rack and a machine number in the rack, so it's as easy
as typing in 2 numbers, and then hitting enter.
Annoying, because we have to console into each box, but necessary. I'm
not sure how you'd distinguish each system from the next if you didn't
manually tell the system what it's name was, but it could be used to
kick a rack of boxes that all get an ip range, but only want a dynamic
DHCP setup when they are uncrated, vs running all the time.
Thoughts?
On Jan 30, 2009, at 5:55 PM, Michael DeHaan wrote:
> Jared Hodge wrote:
>>> 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.
------------------
Matthew Barr
InteractiveOne - Senior System Engineer
e:mbarr@interactiveone.com
c:646.765.6878
aim: matthewbarr1