What is the supported usage of cobbler on Red Hat Satellite?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Satellite versions 5.6
  • Red Hat Satellite versions 5.5
  • Red Hat Satellite versions 5.4
  • Red Hat Satellite versions 5.3

Issue

  • Cobbler is a component included in some versions of Red Hat Satellite. Can I use its features directly in a supported way?
  • Can I use cobbler command line in a supported fashion on Satellite server?
  • Is Cobbler web available to Satellite server and supported?
  • Standalone cobbler not applying patches when installing machine ?

Resolution

Red Hat supports only those Cobbler functions which are either listed within the official Red Hat Satellite documentation, or exposed within Satellite Web UI and/or API, or articles listed in Red Hat Customer Portal, under the subject of "supported cobbler usage" (such as this one).

What's supported

Supported uses of cobbler include:

  • Kickstart template creation and management using the Cheetah template engine and Kickstart Snippets
  • Virtual machine guest installation automation with the koan client-side tool
  • Installation environment analysis using the cobbler check command
  • new feature in Satellite 5.6: building installation ISOs with PXE-like menus using the cobbler buildiso command for Satellite hosts on x86_64 architecture. This feature is not available for Satellite hosts on the s390x architecture.

What's not supported

  • Cobbler/koan stand-alone or cobbler web
  • Cobblers command line usage outside of the Red Hat Satellite documentation.
  • Cobbler buildiso is not supported for Satellite versions 5.5 and below. The usage had been mistakenly added within a previous version of the Deployment Guide - which has been addressed (for more details see "[Satellite] cobbler buildiso fails with 'Required file not found' error'".

Cobbler has been used to replace the previous provisioning engine present within Satellite and extend it to provide additional functionality like kickstart snippets etc. Cobbler is an 'embedded' portion of the Satellite product and should not be used outside of the defined and documented usage of provisioning provided within the Satellite product. Satellite drives cobbler, we store some pieces for provisioning in the Satellite DB, and then use it to refresh/drive data into cobbler. By-passing Satellite WebUI (or documented command line cobbler options) can lead to an unknown state which would not be supported.

This is also being tracked in Red Hat Bugzilla #997668 to include supportability clarification in the official Red Hat Satellite product documentation.

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