All HowTo's Linux Redhat, Fedora and CentOS Linux

Install Cobbler on CentOS/Redhat

This article explains the installation process for Cobbler on CentOS 6.4 64bit.

Install Cobbler and the other services. TIP, you need the EPEL repo available:

yum install cobbler* tftp* httpd

Edit the “/etc/xinetd.d/tftp” file to enable the TFTPd service:

service tftp
{
        socket_type             = dgram
        protocol                = udp
        wait                    = yes
        user                    = root
        server                  = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
        server_args             = -s /var/lib/tftpboot
        disable                 = no
        per_source              = 11
        cps                     = 100 2
        flags                   = IPv4
}

In the above example, I’ve changed “disable” from “yes” to “no”.

Restart Xinetd, Cobbler and Httpd:

service xinetd restart
service httpd restart
service cobbler restart

Update Cobblers signatures. Cobbler uses signatures to identify different operating systems and versions:

cobbler signature update

Next we need to configure DHCP to allow the PXE clients to get an IP address and find your Cobbler server. The two settings you need are as follows. Note that you will need to make these settings changes to your current DHCP server.

next-server 192.168.0.100
filename "/pxelinux.0"

In the above example, the “next-server” is your Cobbler server. Change the IP address in my example to be your Cobbler server.

Next configure your Cobbler configuration file “/etc/cobbler/settings”. Simply change the IP address that Cobbler listens on to be that of the Cobbler server:

next_server: 192.168.0.100

Now we need to add the available operating systems to Cobber. Change your paths as need be:

Options 1:

cobbler distro add --name=Centos_64 --kernel=/mnt/centos_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz --initrd=/mnt/centos_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img

Options 2:

cobbler import --path=/mnt/centos_64 --name=Centos_64 --arch=x86_64

Now we need to “sync” Cobbler. This is where Cobbler takes over and does all the work for us:

cobbler sync

Finally, make sure your SELinux and IPTables are not in your way. That part is up to you. But as a “getting you started” tip (as bad as it is), try this:

service iptables stop
setenforce 0