*** UPDATE ***

Yesterday’s code didn’t work properly – The latest commit now has this working!

*** END UPDATE ***

OK, so we still don’t have a decent GUI yet (we’re working on it, honest!) but we do now have support for Kickstart/FAI/Unattend files to be delivered over HTTP via the API on Edison.

“How do I use it?!” I hear you ask… well, it’s pretty simple really and it will be even faster once we write the GUI.

Here’s how to get your Hamster kicking your systems into life…

At the moment, we don’t have an “upgrade” script, so if you’re already playing with Edison, you’ll need to drop the following tables from your database and then re-run “./manage.py syncdb” from Edison’s home directory:

  • cmdb_networkinterface
  • cmdb_configurationitem (WARNING! This will remove _all_ existing configuration items from the database!)
  • cmdb_operatingsystemversion
  • cmdb_operatingsystemname
  • cmdb_operatingsystembreed

If you’re not already using Edison, just run “./manage.py syncdb” from Edison’s home directory and you should be setup nicely!

I’ve added a custom Emitter to the piston library to present the output from http://edison/api/kickstart/<FQDN>/ as raw text so to get your custom kickstarts, you’ll need to do the following:

  1. Log in to the Django interface (I know, I know, there’s a GUI on the way!)
  2. Create a ConfigurationItemProfile and paste your Kickstart/FAI/Unattend.txt output into the AutoInstallFile field
  3. Create a ConfigurationItem (a server/laptop/desktop for those of us who don’t speak ITIL!) and assign it to the profile
  4. Configure your boot media to retrieve the Kickstart/FAI/Unattend.txt from http://edison/api/kickstart/FQDN/
  5. File any bugs that turn up!

I’ve not tested this completely yet, however I can get Edison to return the output of that field as plain text and I hope to be able to fire up some VMs in the next couple of days to test it thoroughly… 🙂