Thanks Gonzalo and Michael. yum_post_install_mirror: 1 was already set in 
the /etc/cobbler/settings (cobbler-2.0.11). I mirrored epel repo and added
it to the profile:
cobbler profile report

Name                           : Centos_6.0_x86_64_Bit
Comment                        :
DHCP Tag                       : default
Distribution                   : Centos_6.0_x86_64
Enable PXE Menu?               : 1
Kernel Options                 : {}
Kernel Options (Post Install)  : {}
Kickstart                      : /distros/kickstarts/centos60.ks
Kickstart Metadata             : {}
Management Classes             : []
Name Servers                   : []
Name Servers Search Path       : []
Owners                         : ['admin']
Parent Profile                 :
Red Hat Management Key         : <<inherit>>
Red Hat Management Server      : <<inherit>>
Repos                          : ['puppet-epel-6']
Server Override                : <<inherit>>
Template Files                 : {}
Virt Auto Boot                 : 1
Virt Bridge                    : xenbr0
Virt CPUs                      : 1
Virt File Size(GB)             : 5
Virt Path                      :
Virt RAM (MB)                  : 512
Virt Type                      : xenpv

unfortunately this hasn't resolved the "puppet package doesn't exist" error. Things started happening when i 
added $yum_repo_stanza to my ks file; dependencies were resolved and the installation finally started.
so i though everything was good until i received the error at 50% of the installation: "fatal error occurred
while installing initscripts package", installation aborted. so i went back to the basic os installation
(only base repo, no external repos) and it worked like a charm. kind of running out of ideas. perhaps
my ks file is missing something?

You want to add the EPEL repos and then, in the CentOS profile, you'll see a select box where you can select what repos to enable during installation. You select all the repos you want in there (such as EPEL, Puppetlabs, etc). Those repos will not persist after installation, though I believe there is a variable that makes them stick around after install (yum_config_something).

Good luck!
Gonzalo

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:39 PM, George Pitich <george_pitich@yahoo.com> wrote:
i've been trying to kickstart centos 6 (pxe) with cobbler for some time but haven't been successful. namely if installation doesn't require any external repos (like epel or rpmforge) kickstart works great. however when installation needs some packages provided in external repos (epel) i don't know how to specify such a request.

I thought that:

cobbler repo add --name=EPEL-x86_64 --mirror=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/x86_64 --mirror-locally=N


would fetch dependencies during kickstart (puppet) but that simply didn't happen (did cobbler reposync), installation process would complain that puppet package didn't exist. excerpt from the ks file:


url --url http://server-ip/distros/CentOS/6.0/os/x86_64/ 


%packages
@base
@compat-libraries
@core
@puppet

Os and core packages are served from a local yum repo that resides on the same box as cobbler:

also:


cobbler add --name=Centos_6.0_x86_64 --kernel=/distros/CentOS/6.0/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz --initrd=/distros/CentOS/6.0/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
cobbler distro add --name=Centos_6.0_x86_64 --kernel=/distros/CentOS/6.0/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz --initrd=/distros/CentOS/6.0/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img

cobbler profile add --name=Centos_6.0_x86_64_Bit --distro=Centos_6.0_x86_64 --kickstart=/distros/kickstarts/centos60.ks


I can browse the repo without any issues (repo was created from 2 centos 6 dvd iso files). At the moment i am mirroring epel through the cobbler locally. once mirror is done i'll create the profile but not sure if this is the only thing required?


i'm quite new to cobbler and would appreciate any help on this matter.

thx.
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--
Gonzalo Servat
Systems Administrator, SIRCA Ltd
Level 9, 80 Clarence St, Sydney NSW 2000 
PO Box H58 Australia Square NSW 1215 


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