Thanks for the reply. Can you expand upon:
"Cobbler doesn't really map to pxe in the standard way. The cobbler
system name isn't exposed to pxe in the way that you are assuming."
Also, per the man page of cobbler in the "SYSTEM" section:
===
name
The system name works like the name option for other
commands.
If the name looks like a MAC address or an IP, the name will
implicitly be used for either --mac
or --ip of the first interface, respectively. However,
it’s usually better to give a
descriptive name -- don’t rely on this behavior.
A system created with name "default" has special semantics.
If a default system object exists,
it sets all undefined systems to PXE to a specific profile.
Without a "default" system name
created, PXE will fall through to local boot for
unconfigured systems.
When using "default" name, don’t specify any other arguments
than --profile ... they won’t be
used.
===
To me that says that if I use --name=default all undefined machines
should use that profile. Am I misinterpreting the man page? Also, I
don't want to modify the PXE directory directly because if `cobbler
sync` is ever run in the future then the contents will be overwritten.
To make it more clear for the end user I think that adding the 'default' system
always to the systems items
shall be done. It makes it easier to see and set what the default is for systems not in
cobbler. The default system
can't be deleted by the user.
Next to the default system also a two of special meaning profiles shall be available:
- Localboot
- Menu
- Disabled (exclude node completely from DHCP/PXE)
With these special profiles together with the default system you can modify using the
standard way from webui/cli what the behavior is for systems not registered in cobbler.
As a benefit it also allows regular systems registered cobbler to be presented with a menu
at boot. The items to show in the menu shall can even be registered per system. The
current ' Enable PXE Menu?' in profile can then replaced by a 'allowed
profile' list in the 'default' system.
I think this will bring a lot of flexibility and better overview of what is being created
in the DHCP configuration and PXE tftpboot.
Any thoughts?
Regards,
Peter
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