dcode/cobbler-pi.md

## cobbler-pi.md

      
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              cobbler-pi.md
            
          
    Requirements:


Raspberry Pi (I used the B+ model)
Enough hard drive space for install media (I mounted a 16 GB USB3 drive at /var/www/cobbler/)

Installation

The problem with installing cobbler on a Raspberry Pi, is that it depends on the
syslinux package, which is not available for ARM architectures. More importantly,
we specifically need the x86 version of syslinux anyway, because it provides the
files that will be used to PXE boot systems (which in my case is x86_64 arch).
We can download the x86_64 version and force it to install. This satisfies the
dependencies and doesn't matter to us that the architecture doesn't match.
cd ${HOME}
curl -L -O -J 'ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/archive.fedoraproject.org/fedora/linux/releases/20/Everything/x86_64/os/Packages/s/syslinux-4.05-7.fc20.x86_64.rpm'
sudo rpm -vi --nodeps --ignorearch syslinux-4.05-7.fc20.x86_64.rpm

Now we can install cobbler and additional components.

NOTE: cobbler-web is the optional web interface. Everything will work just
fine from the command line. I'm also installing dnsmasq as a local, minimal
DHCP/DNS server for cobbler to manage. You can otherwise configure another
DHCP server to handle this for you.

sudo yum install -y cobbler rsync pykickstart cobbler-web dnsmasq 

sudo systemctl enable cobblerd
sudo systemctl start cobblerd
sudo systemctl status cobblerd
sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl start httpd

Last installation item is to create the tftpboot directory for cobbler to serve
the PXE files from
mkdir /tftpboot

Configuration

Next, we need to do the initial configuration of cobbler. These instructions are
mostly taken from the [Cobbler Docs][cobbler_docs].
If you want to manage DHCP and DNS using dnsmasq, as I did, change the following
in /etc/cobbler/modules.conf. Alternatively, cobbler will manage ISC bind and
ISC dhcp servers.
[dns]
module = manage_dnsmasq

[dhcp]
module = manage_dnsmasq

Next, we need to generate a new default password that will be used in kickstarts
for things like root password and others. Each system can still be given a
specified password, this is just the default. Use the following openssl
command to generate the new value.
openssl passwd -1

Now that we've generated the password we'll use, let's start configuring the
cobbler settings file (/etc/cobbler/settings). Find the following lines and
either uncomment them or change them to reflect the following settings. You can
omit the comments if you wish.
# This is the default password that will be embedded in kickstarts
# Replace with value generated with openssl above
default_password_crypted: "$1$mF86/UHC$WvcIcX2t6crBz2onWxyac."

# This turns out DHCP management with dnsmasq
manage_dhcp: 1

# This turns on DNS management with dnsmasq
manage_dns: 1

# This points to the IP of the TFTP server which provides the PXE boot files
# This should be this server
next_server: 192.168.42.13

# This points to the address of the cobbler server. This is used by scripts
# in the kickstart during the client install process
server: 192.168.42.13


Lastly, we need to configure the dnsmasq configuration template in
/etc/cobbler/dnsmasq.template. You only need to change one line to match
the network you are using.
dhcp-range=192.168.42.200,192.168.42.250

That's it! Let's restart the cobbler service.

sudo systemctl restart cobblerd
sudo cobbler signature update
sudo cobbler sync

Next, you'll need to download some installation media, mount it, and import it
into cobbler. Cobbler will autodetect several distributions and select the
correct information
In my test case, I wanted to import CentOS 7.1 minimal iso. The problem is that
cobbler 2.4.4 does not support this distro via the automatic detection yet.
Updated signatures are available on the project's GitHub page and we can update
them manually like so:
curl http://cobbler.github.io/signatures/latest.json | \
 tee /var/lib/cobbler/distro_signatures.json \
 /etc/cobbler/distro_signatures.json

Now we can import the distro
cd ${HOME}
curl -L -O -J 'http://mirrors.usinternet.com/centos/7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1503-01.iso'

mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1503-01.iso /mnt
cobbler import --name=centos7.1 --arch=x86_64 --breed=redhat --os-version=rhel7 --path=/mnt```

This will run for a while and hopefully report with a successful status. Confirm
the distro is now available.


$ cobbler distro list
CentOS-7.1-x86_64

[cobbler_docs]: http://cobbler.github.io/manuals/2.4.0/2_-_Cobbler_Quickstart_Guide.html