Hi,
A long time ago I asked and later documented on Stack Overflow how to do PXE if you do not have control over the central DHCP server.
A few months ago I got an email from someone stating he couldn't get the above to work. He also stated
I sent an email about this issue to the cobbler mailing list and even
Michael Dehaan, the cobbler creator, did not know about this
possibility, so I think your input would be useful to many people.
So that is the purpose of this mail; It may be useful to you guys.
Turns out that I had done some fixing and changing of my own cobbler (long time ago) that I had forgotten about.
The mentioned fix also has another usecase which I have deployed several times.
I can now define a MAC address, IP address, hostname combination in cobbler and instruct it to install CentOS with a kickstart file that also installs puppet.
Because with this fix the client gets a fixed hostname I can use puppet to cleanly define what software needs to be installed.
In addition I can choose to omit the IP address and has a situation where the client gets a fixed hostname in an environment where I leave the IP addresses dynamic.
This last usecase is something I see as a viable scenario for deploying roaming Linux desktops/laptops and maintaining control over the installed software using a tool like puppet.
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Met vriendelijke groeten,
Niels Basjes