I've been using Cobbler for a long time to manage my bare-metal installs of RHEL-based systems, but now I need to dive into more Ubuntu testing, and Cobbler doesn't support that yet. Foreman looks like it might be more than I need, but I could see using some of its features down the line. Ideally, I just want a simple menu to choose my OS flavor from without necessarily creating a new host each time—although that might be unavoidable. I'm trying to set it up as an easy PXE/kickstart system but I'm getting lost in all the details. I already have a mirror repo for AlmaLinux and have created the OS, but I'm struggling with connecting templates and getting PXE to function properly. My current issue is that I can PXE boot a system, but I get an error before it reaches the Grub screen with options that aren't working.
4 Answers
If you're mainly focusing on Ubuntu, you might want to consider using Canonical's MaaS instead of wrestling with Foreman. It could save you some frustration since it’s designed specifically for Ubuntu environments.
You should definitely look into MaaS. I use it with RHEL systems and it’s great for creating custom images. It manages the network side of PXE booting pretty well too. Just a heads up, though—the documentation can be lacking, and their support forums aren't very helpful for uncommon issues.
While I can't provide a full step-by-step, we integrate Ansible for setups like this. It really depends on your specific configuration, but you can automate a lot. For instance, some systems can register DNS through their ILOs. Using the URI module could help you set up HTTP boots from the ILO API, and creating bootable ISOs with Ansible could streamline your PXE process. If you set a temporary root password during installation, Ansible can take over for configuration afterward. Hopefully, that gives you some ideas!
It depends on how extensive your Ubuntu testing will be. If it's minimal, hand-rolling might be easier. But if you need a more robust solution, look for alternatives that aren't so focused on RHEL. And by the way, I was surprised to see that Cobbler is still being actively developed—kudos for sticking with it!
I don’t have management boards on my systems, so PXE is my only option. Although a boot ISO is nice in some scenarios, I need more flexibility. I do use Ansible extensively, so managing a PXE environment manually is something I'm considering.