[Ovirt-devel] Re: cobbler import of a repo with only noarch packages in it

[Michael DeHaan]

Perry Myers wrote:
> Michael DeHaan wrote:
>> Perry Myers wrote:
>>> I'm trying to do a cobbler import of a directory structure that only 
>>> has noarch packages in it.  I'm using the import to create a minimal 
>>> pxe boot environment without needing to mirror all of the packages 
>>> (we just use external repos for the packages)
>>>
>>> However, when I try to do a cobbler import of a directory structure 
>>> that only contains noarch packages I get the following error:
>>>  
>>>> + cobbler import --name=Fedora-10 --arch=x86_64 
>>>> --path=/var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/Fedora-10-x86_64
>>>> sending incremental file list
>>>>
>>>> sent 392 bytes  received 16 bytes  816.00 bytes/sec
>>>> total size is 134808812  speedup is 330413.75
>>>> Given arch (x86_64) not found on imported tree 
>>>> /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/Fedora-10-x86_64/Packages
>>>>
>>>> - rsync -a  '/var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/Fedora-10-x86_64/' 
>>>> /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/Fedora-10-x86_64 
>>>> --exclude-from=/etc/cobbler/rsync.exclude --progress
>>>> ---------------- (adding distros)
>>>> - found content (breed=redhat) at 
>>>> /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/Fedora-10-x86_64/images/pxeboot
>>>>     
>>>
>>> I know in the past we were able to import a directory structure with 
>>> only noarch packages and still specify an arch (x86_64 or i386) and 
>>> it didn't fail like above.  Is this a recent change or restriction?  
>>> Should we just add a single arch specific package to the directory 
>>> structure to get around this?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Perry
>>>
>>>   
>>
>> It seems you want "cobbler repo add" and not "import", as you're 
>> talking more about a noarch repo than an install tree.   I don't see 
>> how you could get an installable distribution with just noarch 
>> packages :)
>>
>> Import is for install trees, which can also be used as repos, yes.
>>
>> But repos are not == install trees.
>>
>> Does that make sense or did I miss something?
>>
>> If you're doing something really simple "cobbler distro add" alone 
>> might suffice, though I'd like to understand a little more about the 
>> use case to say for sure.
>
> We wanted to set up a distro and profile for using cobbler to install 
> Fedora over pxe but without needing to put any of the rpms in our 
> local cobbler install.
>
> i.e. our distro is just the kernel and initrd and the other images to 
> do an anaconda install.  But the kickstart uses all remote repos for 
> packages.
>
> That make sense?  It's sort of a niche use case.  We just wanted to 
> provide on the oVirt Appliance a minimal cobbler setup so people could 
> immediately deploy Fedora on oVirt Guests w/o needing to put the 
> entire Fedora DVD into the appliance image.

Yeah, this is really simple to do still, I'd just skip cobbler import 
altogether.

# cobbler distro add --name=foo --arch=x86 --initrd=/path/to/initrd 
--kernel=/path/to/kernel
# cobbler profile add --name=bar --profile=foo 
--kickstart=/path/to/kickstart_template.ks

Import is mainly there to assist folks with mirroring install trees (and 
possibly more than one at a time), which you wouldn't need to do.   It 
just makes it a two step process instead of one.
>
> Perry