First, I have something to contribute before I start whining -- I found a workflow for RHEL 5 to get a cobbler generated build ISO onto a USB flash drive
Install LiveCD-Tools ( yum install livecd-tools ) Partition the USB thumb with : fdisk /dev/sdb Delete all partitions and then make one that covers the whold device. Format it with: mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1 I made the ISO with: cobbler buildiso --systems=mynewservername.foo.bar mynewservername.foo.bar having been previously defined in cobbler with profile, etc. Then the magic: /usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk /path/to/cobbler/build-iso/generated.iso /dev/sdb1 This boots up my machine and gives me the menu to select from. I selected the system name (mynewservername.foo.bar) and started it. It asks me to pick the NIC to run from. These servers have 4 built-in ethernet ports. I found that a bit surprising as I defined only one port (eth0) in the cobbler system. I would hope it would take that and run with it. Had I defined more than one, I could understand the query. After that, the kickstart ran as expected, up to and including the reboot. During reboot, I removed the USB thumb, expecting its job finished. When the machine comes back up, it fails to load the operating system. I did not record the exact screen messages, but it indicated (to me) a corrupted OS load. I found a cause for this, but not a solution: The contents of the USB flash drive had been overwritten during the OS installation process ! I have write-protectable USB flash drives from RiData/RiTek (product name: Twister), but did not have one handy to try. The ISO I put onto this USB thumb (at least twice) totally failed to load my server as expected. On a happy note, the same ISO burned onto a CD-ROM and re-attempted with a CD drive ran like a champ. I do not have the luxury to do a lot of pounding on this, but I will try it once more with a write-protectable USB flash drive to see what happens. At this point, I'd advise folks to waste the CD's than fuss with a USB thumb. I have an alternate workflow to suggest for this, but I will post it separately Finally, would you consider this a "bug" ? If so, I will report it that way as well. Thanks for listening. The cheese was great(ed). “Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.” Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobbes) _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list [email protected] https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
