Partha Aji wrote:
As a part of spacewalk (
https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki) we
were
planning to add an interactive cobbler setup script that basically asks
a bunch of questions and sets up the cobbler configs accordingly.
Basically we are filling out things that cobbler check asks for..
Given this context I was wondering if it would make sense to have a
cobbler-setup tool as a part of the cobbler upstream itself. For example
we can have a good default configuration setup and then have the user
run this script where it asks questions like "do you want PXE setup" and
if so "provide the next server ip" and so on... We can either do it
that way or in addition have cobbler setup take in arguments like
--enable-pxe --next-server-ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and cobble up a default
cobbler configuration... Here is an example workflow
# yum install cobbler
# cobbler-setup
.....question - answer session....
...Your cobbler configuration has been setup running cobbler check....
..looks ok...
...start httpd..
# cobbler import ....
Please let me know if you'd find such a script useful. Any suggestions
or comments about the way you'd like the setup script to function would
be great..
Partha
I can see this being useful. Most of the user questions I get on IRC
from new users involve setting up XMLRPC/the-web-app and auth-type
questions, so if the installer helps with those that would be useful.
I don't think it would be a good idea to ask about every config file
option, but the important ones would be good to have.
Some things I'd recommend.
(A) don't require this setup script, but it can be there to walk new
users through setup.
(B) Use Cheetah and /usr/share/cobbler/modules.conf.template and
/usr/share/cobbler/settings.template to build out the file
(C) All questions have good reasonable defaults, except for the
question about "server address".
(C) Questions that should be asked:
-- What is the resolvable address/ip of this server [enter for
autodiscover]?
-- Do you want to enable Cobbler's DHCP management? [y/n] (default no)
-- Which DHCP module do you want to use? [isc/dnsmasq] (default isc)
-- Do you want to enable Cobbler's DNS management feature? [y/n]
(default no)
-- Which DNS module do you want to use? [bind/dnsmasq] (default bind)
-- Are your systems typically set to PXE first in the BIOS order?
[default :no] (this would adjust pxe_just_once, default 0)
-- Make cobbler managed yum repos available to installed systems
(default no) (this adjusts yum_post_install_mirror)
-- What webui authentication mechnism do you want to use [default:
configfile]
-- (If configfile) Enter default username/password for webapp
-- Possibly prompt for default virtualization settings, such as xen or
qemu, how much RAM by default, etc
-- (For spacewalk, we'd probably want to launch this as
/usr/bin/setup-cobbler --defaults=spacewalk to default to
authn_spacewalk, etc?)
-- ...
I don't believe spacewalk is going to use cobbler import, so we can skip
that step.
The setup script should probably mention what the next steps are though,
in which case, mentioning that the user should read the manpage WRT
"cobbler import" may be a fair step.
Anyone else have comments?
--Michael
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