This weekend, I decided to try out the cobbler 2.4.0 from the epel-testing. I set it on in my "home lab", on an Acer Aspire One D257 netbook, which runs SL 6.3 64bit.
Going over the usual (1) import ubuntu-12.04.1-server-amd64.iso to create a distro and profile, add a repo, reposync, (2) add a system was pretty quick. Since my home has a DSL, so I upgraded dnsmasq from repoforge to 2.63rc6, and used its proxy mode.
Two issues immediately became obvious:
(1) Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS default vmlinuz and initrd.gz always resulted prompting for CD/DVD :-(
As a quick get-around, I renamed the pair, and copied their counterpart from install/netboot/ubuntu-installer/amd64/.
The replacement pair got the PXE going, but despite what I specified in the preseed template, it always retrieve every package from the remote Ubuntu repositories :-(
I also tried to use the vmlinux and initrd.lz from Ubuntu 12.04.1 precise desktop daily build. That pair got into the busybox :-( So no go.
(2) Despite the fact that I set the desired interface to use during the installation as eth0, I still got prompted for selecting among two (eth0 and wlan0)
What I have in the /var/lib/cobbler/kickstart/ubuntu-server.seed:
[...] # netcfg will choose an interface that has link if possible. This makes it # skip displaying a list if there is more than one interface. #d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eth0
[...] # You can choose to install restricted and universe software, or to install # software from the backports repository. # d-i apt-setup/restricted boolean true # d-i apt-setup/universe boolean true # d-i apt-setup/backports boolean true
# Uncomment this if you don't want to use a network mirror. d-i apt-setup/use_mirror boolean false
# Select which update services to use; define the mirrors to be used. # Values shown below are the normal defaults. d-i apt-setup/services-select multiselect security d-i apt-setup/security_host string security.ubuntu.com d-i apt-setup/security_path string /ubuntu
# Additional repositories, local[0-9] available # d-i apt-setup/local0/repository string \ # http://local.server/ubuntu precise main # d-i apt-setup/local0/comment string local server [...]
And here is the profile: [root@cobbler kickstarts]# cobbler profile report --name=ubuntu-12.04.1-x86_64 Name : ubuntu-12.04.1-x86_64 TFTP Boot Files : {} Comment : DHCP Tag : default Distribution : ubuntu-12.04.1-x86_64 Enable gPXE? : 0 Enable PXE Menu? : 1 Fetchable Files : {} Kernel Options : {'priority': 'critical', 'locale': 'en_US'} Kernel Options (Post Install) : {'reboot': 'efi'} Kickstart : /var/lib/cobbler/kickstarts/ubuntu-server.seed Kickstart Metadata : {'gateway': '192.168.1.254'} Management Classes : [] Management Parameters : <<inherit>> Name Servers : [] Name Servers Search Path : [] Owners : ['admin'] Parent Profile : Proxy : Red Hat Management Key : <<inherit>> Red Hat Management Server : <<inherit>> Repos : ['ubuntu-12.04.1-x86_64'] [...]
The Repos attribute seemed to be completely ignored!
Has anyone succeeded PXE booting Ubuntu 12.04? If so, were you successful in getting the installation to use your repos? I would be thankful to any hints.
Regards,
--Zack