So, a snapshot of the Cobbler git repository was packaged and uploaded into Ubuntu Natty-Narwhal (the future 11.04) universe archive today. This was a big effort involving multiple members of the Ubuntu Server Team.
So, you should be able to
'apt-get install cobbler'
and get a working cobbler install on Natty. It should be fully capable of installing Fedora and Ubuntu (I believe we tested back to 10.04, not sure if 8.04 or 6.06 are deployable).
We're ok with shipping a pre-release version as our "tech preview" in 11.04, but it raises the question as to when 2.1.0 will actually be released.
I remember asking this before and it seemed like the set of desired features and changes was up for discussion. Seeing as we've added Debian/Ubuntu support now, what else would people like to see in 2.1.0 that isn't already in git?
On 01/19/2011 04:05 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
So, a snapshot of the Cobbler git repository was packaged and uploaded into Ubuntu Natty-Narwhal (the future 11.04) universe archive today. This was a big effort involving multiple members of the Ubuntu Server Team.
That is great news. I looked at the package on Launchpad and there are a few things that I have noticed running cobbler on debian that don't seem to be addressed.
1) The build-in tftpd server (installed as /usr/sbin/tftpd.py) requires the package python-tornado. Would this be handled as a Suggests or Recommended package?
2) The apache config cobbler.conf requires that the apache module proxy_http be loaded. It is not loaded by default on Debian squeeze. I do not know enough about the policy on apache modules to know whether the proper solution is to a) add a2enmod proxy_http to the postinst script or b) add LoadModule proxy_http to cobbler.conf. What do you think is the best solution?
3) The module sync_post_restart_services.py and action_check assume that init scripts are located in /etc/rc.d/init.d. This of course will not work on Debian/Ubuntu. I have hacked in a call to /sbin/service <service> restart and that works but I do not know whether that is a proper cross platform solution to service restarting. Any ideas?
Also a heads up that I submitted some patches to the mainline tree recently that will require minor changes to the package patches. For example the link from /etc/cobbler/cobbler.conf to /etc/apache2/conf.d is not necessary.
Thanks again.
Konrad
On Fri, 2011-01-21 at 09:41 -0500, Konrad Scherer wrote:
On 01/19/2011 04:05 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
So, a snapshot of the Cobbler git repository was packaged and uploaded into Ubuntu Natty-Narwhal (the future 11.04) universe archive today. This was a big effort involving multiple members of the Ubuntu Server Team.
That is great news. I looked at the package on Launchpad and there are a few things that I have noticed running cobbler on debian that don't seem to be addressed.
- The build-in tftpd server (installed as /usr/sbin/tftpd.py) requires the
package python-tornado. Would this be handled as a Suggests or Recommended package?
We should probably package that in its own binary package, Suggest it in the cobbler package, and then have it Depend on python-tornado. But before I file a bug report, AFAIK, that is not the recommended way to serve tftpd, is it?
- The apache config cobbler.conf requires that the apache module proxy_http be
loaded. It is not loaded by default on Debian squeeze. I do not know enough about the policy on apache modules to know whether the proper solution is to a) add a2enmod proxy_http to the postinst script or b) add LoadModule proxy_http to cobbler.conf. What do you think is the best solution?
That should be a conditional configuration... so the whole thing should probably be surrounded in: <IfModule proxy_http>..
Reported the bug here:
https://launchpad.net/bugs/705982
I don't think we want to enable proxy_http out of the box as it needs some consideration by the admins first to make sure they're not exposing themselves as an open proxy.
- The module sync_post_restart_services.py and action_check assume that init
scripts are located in /etc/rc.d/init.d. This of course will not work on Debian/Ubuntu. I have hacked in a call to /sbin/service <service> restart and that works but I do not know whether that is a proper cross platform solution to service restarting. Any ideas?
Right, can you file a bug for this?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cobbler/+filebug
Also a heads up that I submitted some patches to the mainline tree recently that will require minor changes to the package patches. For example the link from /etc/cobbler/cobbler.conf to /etc/apache2/conf.d is not necessary.
Cool! We'll hopefully be pulling from mainline going forward as much as possible, at least until we get up to the feature freeze which is just a couple of weeks away. After that we'll have to evaluate any pulls and maybe even just cherry pick bug fixes.
Clint Byrum wrote:
We should probably package that in its own binary package, Suggest it in the cobbler package, and then have it Depend on python-tornado. But before I file a bug report, AFAIK, that is not the recommended way to serve tftpd, is it?
That server is not enabled by default, last I checked.
It's there for setups that require a tftp server that can serve more dynamic content. I wrote it to enable cobbler to install FreeBSD, specifically. (The FreeBSD pxe boot loader asks for hardcoded paths, basically, and pxelinux can't chain to the 64 bit FreeBSD kernels)
Doug
- The build-in tftpd server (installed as /usr/sbin/tftpd.py) requires the
package python-tornado. Would this be handled as a Suggests or Recommended package?
We should probably package that in its own binary package, Suggest it in the cobbler package, and then have it Depend on python-tornado. But before I file a bug report, AFAIK, that is not the recommended way to serve tftpd, is it?
As Douglas pointed out, tftpd.py is not the default. I agree that putting it in a separate package is the best solution.
That should be a conditional configuration... so the whole thing should probably be surrounded in:<IfModule proxy_http>..
I don't think we want to enable proxy_http out of the box as it needs some consideration by the admins first to make sure they're not exposing themselves as an open proxy.
Interestingly, it looks like the proxy_http module is loaded by default in the Fedora 13 httpd package. I did not know about IfModule, that makes a lot of sense. Attached is my attempt to also add a sensible error message if proxy_http is not enabled, but this is probably not the right place to do this. I thought cobbler check would be the right place, but the proxy already needs to be working for cobbler check to work. It would probably need to be an extra startup check.
- The module sync_post_restart_services.py and action_check assume that init
scripts are located in /etc/rc.d/init.d. This of course will not work on Debian/Ubuntu. I have hacked in a call to /sbin/service<service> restart and that works but I do not know whether that is a proper cross platform solution to service restarting. Any ideas?
Right, can you file a bug for this?
Done. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cobbler/+bug/706995
Thanks
Konrad
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Konrad Scherer