[et-mgmt-tools] [ANNOUNCE] Cobbler 0.6.3 and Koan 0.6.3

[Michael DeHaan]

Hi,

It's time to release Cobbler 0.6.3 and Koan 0.6.3!  

I've already uploaded the RPMs, and will have everything added to the 
build system (and various yum repositories) shortly.

http://cobbler.et.redhat.com/download/cobbler-0.6.3-2.src.rpm
http://cobbler.et.redhat.com/download/koan-0.6.3-2.src.rpm

The main change in this release is the much-requested ability to 
represent multiple network interfaces.    This works with Cobbler's DHCP 
management features as well as for virtual installs.    The syntax 
remains basically as before, though now there are options like --ip1, 
--ip2, to supplement the existing --ip arguments and so on.  This should 
be more clear by looking at the Web UI.    Cobbler will automatically 
migrate the configuration files over to support this when you 
install/upgrade.  (The old copies are saved in a directory in 
/var/lib/cobbler).   All templates will continue to work, so things like 
$ip_address work as before, though you can also say things like 
$ip_address_intf1 to get the data for additional interfaces in your 
templates.

For those folks who were using the Web UI, it now uses htaccess control 
for users, which allows for plugging into multiple authentication 
systems.   The setup changes are documented in the manpage and on the 
Cobbler Wiki:   
https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/projects/cobbler/wiki/CobblerWebUi

In addition, there are some new parameters useful for when a Cobbler 
install must manage multiple networks where the server address might 
change, which don't apply to everyone, but are detailed here:   
https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/projects/cobbler/wiki/MultipleCobblerServerAddresses 
.  It's rather obscure but useful if you need it.

As a side effect of the above change, the way we generate yum 
configurations from cobbler is now much more dynamic, making it much 
easier to host a cobbler server on a laptop (or equivalent) that changes 
addresses often.   (Basically all the yum repository config files are 
now templatized so the server addresses are no longer hard coded).   
You'll probably want to run cobbler reposync (if you are using that 
feature) and then a cobbler sync to generate the config files.

I've copied the full changelogs for cobbler and koan below.   Because of 
the new way interfaces are handled, you will need to upgrade koan to 
work with the new cobbler.  

Thanks once again to everyone who made this release possible by testing, 
sharing ideas, and contributing patches.

As the list of open RFE's is growing quite large, and there are are a 
lot of excellent suggestions there, I want to spend most of the next few 
releases knocking out many of these requests and ideas.   As always, if 
you have ideas for features, please share.

--Michael



Cobbler 0.6.3 Changelog
- Be able to define and use Multiple NICs per system
- Add --virt-cpus to profile editing
- Fix bug where WUI (XMLRPC) auth wasn't supported on EL4
- Add --virt-bridge to profile editing and NICs
- Added serializer_shelve (as option) for added performance/persistance 
over YAML, experimental in /etc/cobbler/modules.conf, see Wiki
- Backup state files and migrate state structures upon RPM upgrade
- Added some more redundant files (for unsupported distros) to the 
rsync.exclude file
- added pre-sync and post-sync triggers, service restarts are now 
handled by /var/lib/cobbler/triggers
- webui now uses htaccess (see manpage and Wiki for setup instructions)
- added pagination to the WUI to keep pages from growing overly long
- added --server-override parameter for help with multi-subnet 
configurations (also see Wiki)
- removed yum-utils as a hard requirement, cobbler check now looks for 
yum-utils
- fixed bug where cobbler would try to copy hardlinks to themselves 
during sync
- misc random bugfixing

* Tue Nov 07 2007 Michael DeHaan <mdehaan at redhat.com> - 0.6.3-2
- Multiple NIC support
- Added traceback print to detect bridge connection problems, if any
- Use --virt-cpu setting from Cobbler
- Misc bugfixing