On Dec 4, 2012, at 6:56 PM, Zack Perry wrote: > Hi, > >> I am in an environment where I cannot control DHCP, so I have gone >> to using Cobbler buildISO's to boot new installs. > > That's a common and widespread misconception, regrettably :-( > > You *never* need to have direct control of a DHCP server to be able > to use PXE boot with cobbler. > > The two DHCP servers that cobbler 2.2.3 (and later versions) work > with OOTB: ISC DHCP and dnsmasq, both can act either > as the authoritative DHCP for selected MAC addresses or simply just > as proxies. Please check the relevant man page depending on your > own preference.
In this environment, DHCP is neither ISC or dnsmasq, but Microsoft. Trying to get a DHCP reservation properly set up with the folks that run it has been a multi-day process that seldom gets done properly the first time. A dnsmasq proxy would be wonderful, but still requires cooperation. > > cobbler hides some details, but my first hand experience has indicated > that I still need to know *really* well the tools that it attempts > to integrate to master cobbler. > > You use image booting only if > > 0. The OS (e.g. MS Windows) is not amenable for PXE booting via cobbler > (yet) > 1. You need fast start-up, e.g. your environment is like AWS EC2 or > a virtual server hosting provider's such as linode's 1a: PXE is impossible because the Microsoft folks have the network completely boogered up. > . > > There might be some other usages at this moment I can't recall. But > PXE booting is clean, and fast enough for most situations. > > >> >> Today, for no reason I can locate, the process stops on a >> screen saying it cannot load the kickstart file. >> The given URL is valid and contains a proper, >> cobbler-generated kickstart. > > Do a cobbler system getks --name=... Can you see the rendered kickstar > file? Answering this from home. I did not try that, but I did use a browser to check the URL that it claims is no-good and it comes up just fine. Also, I can get to the kickstart from the Cobbler web interface. I believe that is equivalent to the command line getks, yes ? >> >> I checked firewalls, restarted apache, restarted cobblerd, >> did a "cobbler sync" and still the same roadblock. > > These come later. Please do the above first. Always as the first step, > often in conjunction with cobbler system dumpvars --name=... |less > as a helpful companion. I will do that. Thanks for responding. One last thought: This problem is on HP xw4600 workstation-towers. At the risk of ragging on the MS folks again, they do things like set BIOS passwords and set Safe-Boot and such as their idea of "securing" the workstation. Could any BIOS misconfigurations be causing this roadblock ? _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list cobbler@lists.fedorahosted.org https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
