Hi,
I wrote a small plugin that I would like to share..
It allows cobbler to auto-allocate IP from a pool, rather than user explicitly specifying the IP at host creation time. This is mostly useful for VMs with statically assigned IP, where you don't care too much what the IP is (other than it is not used in that VLAN).
How to use? In the /etc/cobbler/settings you configure a pool for each VLAN.. ip_auto_alloc: true ip_pool: vlan100: 10.10.100.20 - 10.10.100.250 vlan101: 10.10.101.20 - 10.10.101.250
There is only one pool allowed on each vlan. Pool name must match the vlan/bridge name (from --virt-bridge option). Then you can create a VM as follows..
cobbler system add --name $host --hostname $host --profile Fedora14-kvm --gateway=10.10.100.1 cobbler system edit --name $host --interface=eth0 --virt-bridge=vlan100 \ --ip=0.0.0.0 --subnet=255.255.255.0 --dns-name=${host}.example.com --static=yes cobbler system edit --name $host --interface=eth1 --virt-bridge=vlan101 \ --ip=0.0.0.0 --subnet=255.255.255.0 --dns-name=${host}-mgmt.example.com --static=yes
The code above can be wrapped into a script, which will allow you to add VM just by specifying the hostname.
How it works? When the new host/interface is added to cobbler, plugin is triggered. If it finds an IP address 0.0.0.0 on an interface, it will select a pool associated with the interface's VLAN (--virt-bridge). Then it finds the first unused IP in the pool. The check if the IP is used is made against Cobbler DB, therefore Cobbler must be the only authority to assign IP from that pool. Lastly, the dummy IP 0.0.0.0 is replaced with real IP.
To install.. Install package python-IPy (yum install python-IPy) Copy the attached file "system_post_ip_alloc.py" to /usr/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/cobbler/modules/. Add the config snippet from above to /etc/cobbler/settings. Restart cobblerd
I have also attached the same plugin in a form of a patch file against stable branch.
Regards,
BranoZ