Howto Install and Configure Cobbler on Centos 6

This document describes the steps to get cobbler up and running on Centos 6 After the installation finnishes we need to perform the following steps before we can install Cobbler:

1. Configure the network interfaces 2. Configure the resolver
2. Disable Selinux
3. Disable Iptables Firewall
4. Install EPEL Yum Repository

Configure Linux

Configure the network interfaces

In Redhat 6 Network configurations are handled by network-manager. Since I always install a minimalistic server network-manager is by default not installed and configuration should be done the old fashioned way by edditing the configuration files directly. First we set the correct hostname and gateway

vi /etc/sysconfig/network

Configure the resolver

Disable selinux

Change the following line from:

SELINUX=enforcing

to:

SELINUX=disabled

Disable iptables

Stop Iptables:

service iptables stop

Disable iptables:

chkconfig iptables off

Install the Fedora EPEL repository

rpm -Uhv
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rp
m

Install Cobbler and prerequisites

Install the required packages:

yum install cobbler cobbler-web pykickstart

Enable the required services:

chkconfig httpd on
chkconfig xinetd on
chkconfig cobblerd on

Start the required services:

service httpd start
service xinetd start
service cobblerd start

Configure Cobbler and prerequisites

Install and Configure ISC Dhcp and Bind

For a complete standalone install server we need to install a local dhcp server and a dns server, we will use the bind dns software and the dhcp software both from ISC. Bind has a track record of being hard to configure because of the miriad of options but since cobbler does all the configuring for us we dont need to worry about that.

First install Bind and Dhcp

yum install -y bind bind-utils dhcp

Enable Bind

chkconfig named on

Start Bind

service named start

Enable Dhcp

chkconfig dhcpd on

Start Dhcp

service dhcpd start

Enable dns and dhcp management in cobbler

vi /etc/cobbler/modules.conf

and configure the dns and dhcp lines to look like the example below

[dns]
module = manage_bind
[dhcp]
module = manage_isc

Configuring Bind and Dhcp is done via cobbler, open the following files and make the the changes as stated below:

vi /etc/cobbler/dhcp.template

Make sure the following lines match your network configuration

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
     option routers             192.168.1.1;
     option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1;
     option subnet-mask         255.255.255.0;
     range dynamic-bootp        192.168.1.100 192.168.1.254;

After the above changes it's time to restart cobbler

service cobblerd restart

All changes are now active, let's check if cobbler has any recomendations to get things working:

cobbler check

Correct settings sugested by Cobbler check command

vi /etc/cobbler/settings.conf

change the following lines in the settings file to match the example below

server: 192.168.1.66
next_server: 192.168.1.66

Now we need to install some network bootloaders

cobbler get-loaders

This will download all required boot loaders and some more exotic boot loaders for other architectures. Enable the tftpd daemon in xinetd

vi /etc/xinetd.d/tftp

And change the line:

disable = yes

to:

disable = no

Enable the Rsync daemon in xinetd

vi /etc/xinetd.d/rsync

And change the line:

disable = yes

to:

disable = no

Now we can restart xinetd

service xinetd restart