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Cobbler 2.6 install and config on OL6

Cobbler is Linux boot and installation server. Here is the basic Cobbler installation and configuration.
Get the RPMs from: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/libertas-ict:/cobbler26/RedHat_RHEL-6/noarch/ and install them.
Have SELinux in permissive mode, so file /etc/selinux/config will need to have the line: SELINUX=permissive

The file /etc/cobbler/settings is the main cobbler settings file. These settings can also be edited via the web interface.




For example to setup the root password that new machine gets during kickstart, use openssl to get hashed password. 

[root@cobbler-admin cobbler]# openssl passwd -1
Password:  mypasswd  <- make it stronger. 
Verifying - Password:  mypasswd 
$1$vjo7U1t1$wrmEHWg5i/FottBcWWYDA1

Then place hashed password in the settings file as value for default_password_crypted

Another important setting is to have cobbler server's IP as values for "server" and "next_server".
Note: "next_server" is TFTP server, which is here the same server as Cobbler

The directory /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/ is where all distributions and repository files are copied, so have it big in size. Possibly have symbolic link /var/www/cobbler to some NFS location. 

[root@cobbler-admin]# ls -la /var/www/cobbler
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Jul 29 10:39 /var/www/cobbler -> /u01

[root@cobbler-admin]# df -h /u01
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
nfs-server:/export/ca-cobbler-admin_u01
 100G 15G 86G 15% /u01

To check the cobbler installations and configuration, run the command "cobbler check" (fix errors like installing missing RPMs or follow any other suggestions from the check command). The check can also be performed via the web interface.

The sync option has purpose of creating/rewriting configurations files in TFTP root (/var/lib/tftboot directory), but it's not used often because after editing objects (profiles/systems), Cobbler runs sync in background and update all needed files.

Cobble user management is done in files like /etc/cobbler/modules.conf, /etc/cobbler/users.conf and /etc/cobbler/users.digest
For a user to use the Cobbler, it's not needed to create a shell account. Use htdigest command to create a password for HTTP user. 

[root@cobbler-admin]# htdigest  /etc/cobbler/users.digest "Cobbler" zd

Then add the output line (looks like: zd:Cobbler:a2c8560c91c893c243cf9e294f496368 ) to the file /etc/cobbler/users.digest

Management of the Cobbler service is like managing any other service. 

[root@cobbler-admin]# chkconfig --list cobblerd
cobblerd 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

[root@cobbler-admin]# service cobblerd status
cobblerd (pid 2153) is running...

The Cobbler web interface is accessible at: http://<cobbler-hostname>/cobbler_web


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