Cobbler installation on CentOS/RHEL

Pre-Requisits

For this installation, we will need to have the following services installed: dhcp, bind & apache.

Install with the following yum command:

yum install httpd dhcp bind

If necessary, the dhcpd service can be restricted to servicing dhcp requests on just one port. To do this, edit the /etc/sysconfig/dhcpd file and set the following line:

DHCPDARGS=eth1

Adding the EPEL Repo to get cobbler

Download http://mirrors.coreix.net/fedora-epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm (or whatever is suitable for the installed OS):

wget http://mirrors.coreix.net/fedora-epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

And install:

rpm -ivh epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

Install cobbler

Install using yum:

yum install cobbler cobbler-web

Check apache is working

Restart httpd:

service httpd restart

The following error might occur:

Starting httpd: Syntax error on line 10 of /etc/httpd/conf.d/cobbler.conf:
Invalid command 'WSGIScriptAliasMatch', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
                                                           [FAILED]

If this error occurs, firstly remove mod_python:

rpm -e mod_python

Then, create a mod_wsgi config file:

cat > /etc/httpd/conf.d/05-load-wsgi.conf
LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so

And finally restart apache:

service httpd restart

Add a few more packages to satisfy some cobbler requirements

Install debmirror with yum (needed to manage debian deployments):

yum install debmirror

Install pykickstart with yum (A python library for manipulating kickstart files):

yum install pykickstart

Edit xinet.d/rsync file

Edit /etc/xinetd.d/rsync and change disable to no:

service rsync
{
        disable = no
        socket_type     = stream
        wait            = no
        user            = root
        server          = /usr/bin/rsync
        server_args     = --daemon
        log_on_failure  += USERID
}

Edit /etc/debmirror.conf for proper Debian support

Edit /etc/debmirror.conf and comment dists and arches lines:

# Download options
$host="ftp.debian.org";
$user="anonymous";
$passwd="anonymous@";
$remoteroot="/debian";
$download_method="ftp";
# @dists="sid";
@sections="main,main/debian-installer,contrib,non-free";
# @arches="i386";
# @extra_dirs="";
# @ignores="";
. . . . .

Configure cobbler

Get cobbler to manage dhcp and dns by setting the following in /etc/cobbler/settings:

manage_dhcp: 1
manage_dns: 1

Set server ip addresses in /etc/cobbler/settings:

next_server: 172.28.0.100
server: 172.28.0.100

Confirm the following are set in /etc/cobbler/modules.conf:

[dns]
module = manage_bind

[dhcp]
module = manage_isc