15.4. Extending the Discovery Image

It is possible to extend the Satellite Discovery image with custom facts, software, or device drivers. You can also provide a compressed archive file containing extra code for the image to use.
First, create the following directory structure: 
.
├── autostart.d
│   └── 01_zip.sh
├── bin
│   └── ntpdate
├── facts
│   └── test.rb
└── lib
    ├── libcrypto.so.1.0.0
    └── ruby
        └── test.rb
Where:
  • The autostart.d directory contains scripts that are executed in POSIX order by the image when it starts, but before the host is registered to Satellite.
  • The bin directory is added to the $PATH variable; you can place binary files here and use them in the autostart scripts.
  • The facts directory is added to the FACTERLIB variable so that custom facts can be configured and sent to Satellite.
  • The lib directory is added to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable and lib/ruby is added to the RUBYLIB variable, so that binary files in /bin can be executed correctly.
New directives and options are appended to the existing environment variables (PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, RUBYLIB and FACTERLIB). If you need to specify the path to something explicitly in your scripts, the zip contents are extracted to the /opt/extension directory on the image.
After creating the above directory structure, package it into a zip archive with the following command: 
zip -r my_extension.zip .
You can create multiple zip files but be aware they will be extracted to the same place on the Discovery image, so files in later zips will overwrite earlier ones if they have the same file name.
To inform the Discovery image of the extensions it should use, place your zip files on your TFTP server with the Discovery image, and then update the APPEND line of the PXELinux template with the fdi.zips option where the paths are relative to the TFTP root. For example, if you have two archives at $TFTP/zip1.zip and $TFTP/boot/zip2.zip, use the following syntax: 
fdi.zips=zip1.zip,boot/zip2.zip
See Section 15.1.2, “Configuring PXE-booting” for more information on updating the PXE template.