Deploying Abiquo 2.4 with Cobbler
Now that you can download Abiquo and get a 30-day trial license, you may like to automate the deployment of a new datacenter in your Abiquo environment. I’ll explain here how to automatically deploy Abiquo using Cobbler.
First of all, you need to get Cobbler up and running. I’m not going to explain here how to install it, but you can use the official guide that is very detailed or these instructions for installing on CentOS 6. However, I will give you some advice about Cobbler installation. Review the output of the ‘cobbler check’ command to double check that everything is working fine. You will need to have at least DHCP and TFTP managed by Cobbler.
I will assume that you downloaded the Abiquo ISO into the tmp folder. First of all you need to mount the ISO:
mount -o loop /tmp/abiquo-linux-ee-2.4-GA.iso /media
Then you need to import the ISO to Cobbler. Before you do that, you need to ensure the import command will recognize Abiquo. So you need to edit the /var/lib/cobbler/distro_signatures.json file and add the following “abiquo24” code in the Red Hat section. You should insert the code after the fedora section and before the debian section, as shown in the following example:
},
"fedora18": {
"signatures":["Packages"],
"version_file":"(fedora)-release-18-(.*)\.noarch\.rpm",
"version_file_regex":null,
"kernel_arch":"kernel-(.*)\.rpm",
"kernel_arch_regex":null,
"supported_arches":["i386","x86_64","ppc","ppc64"],
"supported_repo_breeds":["rsync", "rhn", "yum"],
"kernel_file":"vmlinuz(.*)",
"initrd_file":"initrd(.*)\.img",
"isolinux_ok":false,
"default_kickstart":"/var/lib/cobbler/kickstarts/sample_end.ks",
"kernel_options":"repo=$tree",
"kernel_options_post":"",
"boot_files":[]
},
"abiquo24": {
"signatures":["FrameOS"],
"version_file":"abiquo-release-ee-2.4.0-1.el5.noarch.rpm",
"version_file_regex":null,
"kernel_arch":"kernel-(.*).rpm",
"kernel_arch_regex":null,
"supported_arches":["i386","x86_64","ppc","ppc64"],
"supported_repo_breeds":["rsync", "rhn", "yum"],
"kernel_file":"vmlinuz(.*)",
"initrd_file":"initrd(.*)\.img",
"isolinux_ok":false,
"default_kickstart":"/var/lib/cobbler/kickstarts/sample.ks",
"kernel_options":"",
"kernel_options_post":"",
"boot_files":[]
}
},
"debian": {
"squeeze": {
"signatures":["dists"],
"version_file":"Release",
"version_file_regex":"Codename: squeeze",
"kernel_arch":"linux-headers-(.*)\.deb",
"kernel_arch_regex":null,
"supported_arches":["i386","amd64"],
"supported_repo_breeds":["apt"],
"kernel_file":"vmlinuz(.*)",
"initrd_file":"initrd(.*)\.gz",
"isolinux_ok":false,
"default_kickstart":"/var/lib/cobbler/kickstarts/sample.seed",
"kernel_options":"",
"kernel_options_post":"",
"boot_files":[]
}
},
Be careful with the commas ‘,’. They are important in a JSON file!
After you edit the file, restart Cobbler:
service cobblerd restart
Now we are ready to import Abiquo into Cobbler:
cobbler import --path=/media --name=abiquo-2.4GA-x86_64
Because Abiquo is based on CentOS but not just any CentOS, you need to do one last magic trick to overwrite the pxe files with the right ones. Cobbler will copy the default CentOS files, but we need the Abiquo ones.
cp initrd.img vmlinuz /var/lib/tftpboot/images/abiquo-2.4GA-x86_64/
To finish, you just need to define a kickstart file for the profile associated with the new distro. This is my example for a monolithic installation:
<pre>install text url --url http://10.60.1.114/cobbler/ks_mirror/abiquo-2.4GA-x86_64/ lang en_US.UTF-8 keyboard us #network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp --hostname abiquo rootpw temporal firewall --disabled authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5 selinux --disabled timezone --utc Europe/Madrid bootloader --location=mbr # unless you clear all partitions first, this is # not guaranteed to work zerombr yes clearpart --all part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100 --asprimary part pv.1 --size 1 --grow --asprimary volgroup VolGroup00 pv.1 logvol swap --fstype swap --name=swap --vgname=VolGroup00 --recommended logvol / --fstype ext4 --name=root --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1 --grow skipx reboot %packages @core @abiquo-monolithic %post mkdir /opt/vm_repository service mysql start mysql -e "grant all privileges on *.* to 'root'@'%' identified by 'temporal';" mysql -e "flush privileges;" mysql < /usr/share/doc/abiquo-server/database/kinton-schema.sql service mysql restart mysql -e "flush privileges;" /usr/bin/abicli set database-password echo "root soft nofile 4096" >> /etc/security/limits.conf echo "root hard nofile 10240" >> /etc/security/limits.conf chkconfig mysqld on chkconfig redis on chkconfig dhcpd on chkconfig rabbitmq-server on chkconfig iptables off %end</pre>
Or this kickstart to deploy a new datacenter:
<pre>install text url --url http://10.60.1.114/cobbler/ks_mirror/abiquo-2.4GA-x86_64/ lang en_US.UTF-8 keyboard us #network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp --hostname abiquo rootpw temporal firewall --disabled authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5 selinux --disabled timezone --utc Europe/Madrid bootloader --location=mbr # unless you clear all partitions first, this is # not guaranteed to work zerombr yes clearpart --all part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100 --asprimary part pv.1 --size 1 --grow --asprimary volgroup VolGroup00 pv.1 logvol swap --fstype swap --name=swap --vgname=VolGroup00 --recommended logvol / --fstype ext4 --name=root --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1 --grow skipx reboot %packages @core @abiquo-remote-services %post mkdir /opt/vm_repository echo "root soft nofile 4096" >> /etc/security/limits.conf echo "root hard nofile 10240" >> /etc/security/limits.conf chkconfig redis on chkconfig dhcpd on chkconfig iptables off %end</pre>