I've added a new feature to koan for the next release.
Example:
koan --virt --server=cobbler.example.org --profile=YourProfileNameHere --vm-poll
(--vm-poll is a new option)
What's that do?
After libvirt kicks of the installation, koan will poll the VM in the background to watch for it to shut off. Once it does, it will start the VM back up. (If the install happens to crash, koan will exit and mention details. It won't keep monitoring forever... however, there currently is /not/ a time limit to this polling, which is something we /might/ want to add in the future).
This gets around a little weird thing in virtualization where an installing guest can't set it's "on reboot" process to reboot initially -- why? That's technical. Basically the installer kernel/initrd must be swapped out, therefore it must be shut down the first time. This little option, which is not the default, does that. It's only supported for xen and qemu/KVM.
I have some bits checked in now and am just completing the last rounds of testing.
This should be highly useful for those that want to script koan installations and need the guest to be back up when they're done; however if you want to get multiple installs going in parallel, you'll also want to start multiple copies of koan. Due to implementation reasons this /does not/ background itself, as we are not creating a "koand" daemon.
--Michael