I think the Netboot Enable option is hidden too much between other settings in the edit systems page. The option has major impact on system behaviour if the nodes are always using PXE boot. An example of a situation that can happen. A user selects a profile and marks the checkbox for a node. Nothing happens at first. But a week later the node crashes with a kernel panic and reboots. Now the system will be redeployed.
A solution might be to not only disable the PXE after deployment, but also change the profile assigned to the system.
Enabling the netboot and assigning a profile is an operation and not a node configuration. Is it possible to create a operations page. In the operations page you can then do the actions like: - set active profile - enable netboot, with also a trigger that allows a script to be called that modifies bootorder at the node through ILO. - (optional) additional features like reboot automatic through ILO - Actions button like reboot
Example layout:
System Netboot Active Profile Profile Option Actions Node1 X Localboot Reboot Poweron Poweroff Node2 X Saveimage node2-20081113.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff Node3 RHEL4.6 webserver Reboot Poweron Poweroff Node4 X RHEL4.6 Reboot Poweron Poweroff Node5 X Loadimage node5-20081031.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff
In the system edit page you can then select multiple profiles that are allowed for the node.
Do you think this is a good idea? How hard is it to implement the parts: - WebUI with dropdown boxes - Add ILO support - Add (customizable) Actions to call a shell scripts
Regards, Peter
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Vreman, Peter - Acision wrote:
I think the Netboot Enable option is hidden too much between other settings in the edit systems page. The option has major impact on system behaviour if the nodes are always using PXE boot. An example of a situation that can happen. A user selects a profile and marks the checkbox for a node. Nothing happens at first. But a week later the node crashes with a kernel panic and reboots. Now the system will be redeployed.
A solution might be to not only disable the PXE after deployment, but also change the profile assigned to the system.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but the pxe_just_once setting in /etc/cobbler/settings is designed to prevent this from happening. It toggles the netboot flag automatically after finishing installing the system.
If you were, I thought it beared repeating for everyone else's context and in case they weren't aware of this.
Enabling the netboot and assigning a profile is an operation and not a node configuration. Is it possible to create a operations page.
In the operations page you can then do the actions like:
set active profile
enable netboot, with also a trigger that allows a script to
be called that modifies bootorder at the node through ILO.
(optional) additional features like reboot automatic
through ILO
Actions button like reboot
Example layout:
System Netboot Active Profile Profile Option Actions
Node1 X Localboot Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node2 X Saveimage node2-20081113.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node3 RHEL4.6 webserver Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node4 X RHEL4.6 Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node5 X Loadimage node5-20081031.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff
In the system edit page you can then select multiple profiles that are allowed for the node.
Do you think this is a good idea? How hard is it to implement the parts:
I think it's an excellent idea, and can be done by making modifications to the existing "list systems" page.
WebUI with dropdown boxes
Add ILO support
There have been talks about doing this, though the one project to simplify the setup of the ILO bits wasn't ever created. Do you have ideas on what tools you would use to implement this and how configuration of the cobbler-system to power management tools would be handled?
I believe the suggestions revolved around using the fence scripts from our cluster tools though those aren't available seperately IIRC.
It could be done as simply as having a field for "poweron command" and "poweroff" command, couldn't it? Then we could enable those buttons if those fields were set.
cobbler system list | grep lab3 | xargs -n1 --replace cobbler system edit --name={} --poweron-command="..."
???
Want to take a crack at adding this?
I think if we do this we also want the following commands to work:
cobbler system edit --name=foo --power=on --netboot-enabled=1 cobbler system edit --name=foo --power=off
Add (customizable) Actions to call a shell scripts
Not sure what you mean by this last one, though something like the above may work well.
Regards,
Peter
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Michael DeHaan wrote:
Vreman, Peter - Acision wrote:
I think the Netboot Enable option is hidden too much between other settings in the edit systems page. The option has major impact on system behaviour if the nodes are always using PXE boot. An example of a situation that can happen. A user selects a profile and marks the checkbox for a node. Nothing happens at first. But a week later the node crashes with a kernel panic and reboots. Now the system will be redeployed.
A solution might be to not only disable the PXE after deployment, but also change the profile assigned to the system.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but the pxe_just_once setting in /etc/cobbler/settings is designed to prevent this from happening. It toggles the netboot flag automatically after finishing installing the system.
If you were, I thought it beared repeating for everyone else's context and in case they weren't aware of this.
Enabling the netboot and assigning a profile is an operation and not a node configuration. Is it possible to create a operations page.
In the operations page you can then do the actions like:
set active profile
enable netboot, with also a trigger that allows a script to
be called that modifies bootorder at the node through ILO.
(optional) additional features like reboot automatic
through ILO
Actions button like reboot
Example layout:
System Netboot Active Profile Profile Option Actions
Node1 X Localboot Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node2 X Saveimage node2-20081113.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node3 RHEL4.6 webserver Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node4 X RHEL4.6 Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node5 X Loadimage node5-20081031.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff
In the system edit page you can then select multiple profiles that are allowed for the node.
Do you think this is a good idea? How hard is it to implement the parts:
I think it's an excellent idea, and can be done by making modifications to the existing "list systems" page.
WebUI with dropdown boxes
Add ILO support
There have been talks about doing this, though the one project to simplify the setup of the ILO bits wasn't ever created. Do you have ideas on what tools you would use to implement this and how configuration of the cobbler-system to power management tools would be handled?
I believe the suggestions revolved around using the fence scripts from our cluster tools though those aren't available seperately IIRC.
It could be done as simply as having a field for "poweron command" and "poweroff" command, couldn't it? Then we could enable those buttons if those fields were set.
cobbler system list | grep lab3 | xargs -n1 --replace cobbler system edit --name={} --poweron-command="..."
???
Want to take a crack at adding this?
I think if we do this we also want the following commands to work:
cobbler system edit --name=foo --power=on --netboot-enabled=1 cobbler system edit --name=foo --power=off
Add (customizable) Actions to call a shell scripts
Not sure what you mean by this last one, though something like the above may work well.
Regards,
Peter
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cobbler mailing list cobbler@lists.fedorahosted.org https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
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Additional info:
If anyone wants to write the "update-cobbler-systems-records-from-func-script" I will most /definitely/ add it to either the Func or Cobbler codebases and happily maintain that..
With the above approach it would be possible to make all systems initially boot a generic i386 profile that registered them with Func, got their details, and then updated cobbler, so all you would have to do then would be to edit the profile assignment for each self-created system record in cobbler and flip the netboot flags.
In other words, you could /easily/ register a completely blank datacenter and then decide what machines do what. Pretty powerful.
It needs a catchier name though :)
If no one has interest in doing this it may be something for later, though the RFE list is already pretty long with good ideas so I can't give any idea of when that would be.
--Michael
I think the Netboot Enable option is hidden too much between other settings in the edit systems page. The option has major impact on system behaviour if the nodes are always using PXE boot. An example of a situation that can happen. A user selects a profile and marks the checkbox for a node. Nothing happens at first. But a week later the node crashes with a kernel panic and reboots. Now the system will be redeployed.
A solution might be to not only disable the PXE after deployment, but also change the profile assigned to the system.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but the pxe_just_once setting in /etc/cobbler/settings is designed to prevent this from happening. It toggles the netboot flag automatically after finishing installing the system.
If you were, I thought it beared repeating for everyone else's context and in case they weren't aware of this.
I have the pxe_just_once enabled otherwise the deployment will go into an infinite loop, because kickstart reboots at the end :)
But it is editing afterwards, the description is also not clear what the impact is when a node still has PXE boot enabled. And that is something that can't easily be retrieved from a running node (without using ILO).
Example layout:
System Netboot Active Profile Profile Option Actions
Node1 X Localboot Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node2 X Saveimage node2-20081113.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node3 RHEL4.6 webserver Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node4 X RHEL4.6 Reboot Poweron Poweroff
Node5 X Loadimage node5-20081031.img Reboot Poweron Poweroff
In the system edit page you can then select multiple profiles that are allowed for the node.
Do you think this is a good idea? How hard is it to implement the parts:
I think it's an excellent idea, and can be done by making modifications to the existing "list systems" page.
WebUI with dropdown boxes
Add ILO support
Some more thoughts to simplify
System Netboot Profile Arguments Node1 Localboot Node2 Saveimage node2-20081113.img Node3 Loadimage node3-20081031.img Node4 Discover Node5 Kickstart RHEL4.6
And next to that a checkbox for which an action can be executed. The possible actions are registered shell scripts and will be executed at the cobbler server.
There have been talks about doing this, though the one project to simplify the setup of the ILO bits wasn't ever created. Do you have ideas on what tools you would use to implement this and how configuration of the cobbler-system to power management tools would be handled?
I have only experience with HP ILO2. I'm using ssh with a public-key to have non-interactive commands. But having simple shell script available that is passed the name of the System and the ILO ip is the most flexible. The ILO IP can directly be used and optional the System can be used to retrieve additional fields like ILO-publickey/username/password etc.
I believe the suggestions revolved around using the fence scripts from our cluster tools though those aren't available seperately IIRC.
It could be done as simply as having a field for "poweron command" and "poweroff" command, couldn't it? Then we could enable those buttons if those fields were set.
cobbler system list | grep lab3 | xargs -n1 --replace cobbler system edit --name={} --poweron-command="..."
cobbler action add --name=Powerown -script=/var/lib/cobbler/scripts/poweron.sh
For running I'm thinking about :
cobbler action run --action=ilo_enable_pxe --system=node3 cobbler action run --action=ssh_reboot --system=node3 [ $? -eq 1 ] && cobbler action run --action=ilo_reboot --system=node3 cobbler action run --action=saveimage --system=node3 --arg=node3-20081131 cobbler action run --action=ilo_disable_pxe --system=node3
I can try to build something.
Peter
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