Steven W. Carter wrote: > An interesting idea for additional functionality behind this would be > to enable a "watch folder" in the cobbler directory where ISOs could > be dumped with a descriptive filename. Then Cobbler could > automatically add them to the PXE menu on a sync. > > For example, you could have a few images named: > > really_cool_image.iso > random_install_image.iso > > in a directory like /var/www/html/cobbler/ISO/ > > and then the menu would have entries that look like: > > really_cool_image > random_install_image > > Since these would have no other integration with the cobbler system, > Cobbler would only need to know their location to put them into the > PXE menu. This would also make it very easy to allow for updates to > the images without requiring any fuss with the Cobbler interface, > especially when these ISO images wouldn't be handled with any > kickstarting or any of the other nifty features that Cobbler usually > takes care of. Thoughts? > > ~Steven
Yes, we could easily do something like this ... I think a first step is being able to flag a cobbler image object for use with memdisk, so you can do "cobbler image add --name=foo --path=/splat/foo.iso --bootmethod=memdisk Right now if you add an image record it shows up as if it was directly bootable, which is wrong. The watch directory behavior could then implemented as a cobbler pre-sync trigger. We currently don't ship many triggers, but we could ship more -- possibly installing all the "potentially useful" triggers in a parallel directory where someone could just create a symlink to enable them. As I still have more to do with image objects, I'll look into that first part today. --Michael > > On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 4:28 PM, Michael DeHaan <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Michael DeHaan wrote: > > This is a neat feature, but takes some explaining. Previously > we have > > been able to support things like memtest through special code, > we found > > the image if installed and added it to certain PXE configs. > However you > > couldn't easily do things like make MAC address AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF > > automatically boot memtest, and so forth. > > > > Now, imagine that special code didn't exist and we could do it > > generically. Also imagine that we weren't booting something as > lame as > > memtest. What if we could easily boot anything we wanted, just > as we > > can deal with kernels and initrds? Now we can. > > > > cobbler image add --name=SuperAwesomeLiveEnvironment > --file=/opt/live.iso > > > > Though we don't have to imagine it, we have this on the devel branch > > now. Admittedly, I still tested with memtest and not > > SuperAwesomeLiveEnvironment, though the concept is entirely the > same :) > > > > Further, we can do things like assign a specific MAC address to boot > > that live environment: > > > > cobbler system add --name=fooserver --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF > > --image=SuperAwesomeLiveEnvironment > > > > The next time that system boots, it will boot that image. This > doesn't > > have to be an installation related image, it might just be a > firmware > > update disk. > > > > Note that I didn't use --profile here, I used --image. > > > > One of cobbler's goals is to be able to break down the abstraction > > between physical and virtual machines. Here we are able to use > "cobbler > > image" objects (with cobbler/koan 1.1 and later) to do installs both > > physically and virtually. > > > > The ability to netboot a live-image plays critically into our > desire to > > support net-deploying live image cloning environments, and may > also have > > applications for Stateless environments (LTSP thin clients?). > > > > Note that as with cobbler profiles, you can also assign arbitrary > > "append" options (i..e kernel options) to images. We could > also use > > this to streamline our existing support to memtest, but since > that is > > already "automatic" and relatively clever (it adds it > automatically if > > you have memtestx86+ installed) we probably will leave that as is. > > > > Anyhow, feel free to test this feature out on the devel branch > with any > > bootable images. > > > > I will say adding this feature was relatively complicated, so > with the > > image support, testing will be very welcome to see if we run > into any > > problems. No changes are in place for any existing profiles or > system > > objects, just note that now systems can also "inherit" from > images, or > > profiles, but not both at the same time. > > > > We still need to update the WebUI to take advantage of these > features. > > > > So, please help test this out, and if everything is good we'll > see about > > updating the Wiki to show how to use this with other tools, such > as the > > firmware update images that are already out there... and we can > also do > > some more testing with live environments and maybe even stateless > > applications. > > > > --Michael > > > > _______________________________________________ > > cobbler mailing list > > [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > > https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler > > > > It takes more than this to PXE-boot a non-live image. > > I'll look into this and have some more instructions on the Wiki later > (and others are welcome to add to it once up). > > Doing some extra live testing now. > > --Michael > _______________________________________________ > cobbler mailing list > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > cobbler mailing list > [email protected] > https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler > _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list [email protected] https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
