The original installation instructions I found are here, and unfortunately they didn’t quite work. I’m starting to notice a trend. Either my Google-Foo is getting worse, or people are getting lazy with directions. The Cobbler Quickstart Guide is the best and most up-to-date I have found. Early in my career I worked with an Engineer who was a wizard with all things Linux. He helped me with kickstarting boxes, and I never found the time, or I guess, wanted to find the time to learn the system. It turns out it was easier than I thought. Now if only I could master regular expression like he could.
- Disable SELINUX
[root@cobbler tmp]# getenforce
- Install EPEL Repository
- For some reason people keep trying install EPEL from an RPM file and the links are usually dead.
[root@cobbler tmp]# rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
- Update and Install Cobbler Files, dnsmasq, syslinux, and pykickstart
[root@cobbler tmp]# yum -y update[root@cobbler tmp]# yum -y install cobbler cobbler-web dnsmasq syslinux pykickstart xinetd bind fence-agents wget
- Start the Cobbler Services
systemctl enable cobblerd
systemctl start cobblerd
systemctl enable httpd
systemctl start httpd
- Browse to https://COBBLERIP/cobbler_web to verify the web interface is available. The default username and password is cobbler/cobbler.
- Change the default password for the Cobbler User
[root@cobbler tmp]# htdigest /etc/cobbler/users.digest “Cobbler” cobbler
- Edit /etc/cobbler/settings
- There are a handful of settings that need to be changed here. Biggest among them is default_password_crypted. This is the root password for the installed systems.
- To create this encrypted value run the command
[root@cobbler tmp]# openssl passwd -1 -salt ‘randomphrase’ ‘Changeme123’
- Copy the value output and paste in into the field default_password_crypted
- Other fields include
manage_dhcp: 1
manage_dns: 1
pxe_just_once: 1
next_server: YOURSERVERIP
server: YOURSERVERIP
- Edit /etc/cobbler/dhcp.template
- Change the Network related fields to fit your network.
- The below block is all that needs to be changed
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option routers 192.168.1.1;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.210,192.168.1.211;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
filename “/pxelinux.0”;
default-lease-time 21600;
max-lease-time 43200;
next-server $next_server;
}
- Run Check Scripts
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler check
The following are potential configuration items that you may want to fix:
1 : debmirror package is not installed, it will be required to manage debian deployments and repositories
2 : The default password used by the sample templates for newly installed machines (default_password_crypted in /etc/cobbler/settings) is still set to ‘cobbler’ and should be changed, try: “openssl passwd -1 -salt ‘random-phrase-here’ ‘your-password-here'” to generate new one
- You will find a handful of items that show up. For me it showed what services I didn’t have installed and other parts. The necessary ones are below. debmirror is not available on CentOS 7. Essentially it’s just a perl script, and there are handful of posts on how to recreate it on CentOS 7, but I haven’t investigated.
- Install undocumented Cobbler Dependencies
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler get-loaders
- Restart cobblerd and then run ‘cobbler sync’ to apply changes.
[root@cobbler tmp]# systemctl restart cobblerd
[root@cobbler tmp]# systemctl restart cobblerd
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler sync
task started: 2016-11-14_174344_sync
task started (id=Sync, time=Mon Nov 14 17:43:44 2016)
running pre-sync triggers
… COBBLERY STUFF
*** TASK COMPLETE ***
- Mount and ISO and Import your Distribution
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler import –arch=x86_64 –path=/mnt/iso –name=CentOS-7
task started: 2016-11-14_170108_import
task started (id=Media import, time=Mon Nov 14 17:01:08 2016)
Found a candidate signature: breed=redhat, version=rhel6
Found a candidate signature: breed=redhat, version=rhel7
Found a matching signature: breed=redhat, version=rhel7
Adding distros from path /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/CentOS-7-x86_64:
creating new distro: CentOS-7-x86_64
trying symlink: /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/CentOS-7-x86_64 -> /var/www/cobbler/links/CentOS-7-x86_64
creating new profile: CentOS-7-x86_64
associating repos
checking for rsync repo(s)
checking for rhn repo(s)
checking for yum repo(s)
starting descent into /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/CentOS-7-x86_64 for CentOS-7-x86_64
processing repo at : /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/CentOS-7-x86_64
need to process repo/comps: /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/CentOS-7-x86_64
looking for /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/CentOS-7-x86_64/repodata/*comps*.xml
Keeping repodata as-is :/var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/CentOS-7-x86_64/repodata
*** TASK COMPLETE ***
- Verify you have a Distro
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler distro list
CentOS-7-x86_64
- Verify you have a Profile
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler profile list
CentOS-7-x86_64
- Create and Install a System
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler system add –name=test –profile=CentOS-7-x86-64
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler system edit –name=test –interface=eth0 –mac=00:50:56:bf:0e:02 –ip-address=10.0.1.74 –netmask=255.255.255.0 –static=1 –dns-name=test.beaker.local
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler system edit –name=test –gateway=10.0.1.1 –hostname=test.beaker.local
Of course you’ll want to substitute the correct MAC, IP, Netmask, Gateway, and Hostname. The above settings worked without issue on my vSphere 6 Installation.
Note — If you have a WDS and a Cobbler Server, shut down the one you don’t want to use. I have a WDS System Running, and once I turned it off, Cobbler worked without issue.
After a bit you’ll have a working system
Once you are happy with the system, make sure you remove it from Cobbler. Be sure to run system list to verify its gone.
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler system remove –name=test
[root@cobbler tmp]# cobbler system list
[root@cobbler tmp]#
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