Spacewalk - Linux automated installs

Handruin

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I'm looking into ways to kickstart Linux installs on bare metal for a consistent set of hardware (Intel x86 64-bit) on CentOS 6.5 with specific configurations and packages. I came across Spacewalk which looks like it offers some promising possibilities. Has anyone used this before and have and pros/cons with it? I plan to try it out and see how it works but there appear to be a few alternatives (FIA, Cobbler, OpenQRM, or rolling my own PXE/DHCP/TFTP).
 

Handruin

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I admit I've not heard of Puppet until now. I'm looking for a bootstrap setup for a new hardware appliance that will be sold to customers. We don't need continued integrated management once setup. Basically we will build and test a known distro config with our own packages/software and then power on the bare metal and have this image sucked down into it and installed. On first power on, it will setup itself based on our scripts and config details. I can't tell if that's what Puppet is intended for compared to Spacewalk (and Cobbler).
 

Chewy509

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Sounds like you just need Cobbler then? Otherwise you could do your own Distro based on CentOS and use the automated installation script functionality...

Spacewalk, IIRC, is the open-source version of Red Hats Satellite, which has full lifecycle management, which sounds like overkill... Puppet, like Spacewalk/Satellite is for full lifecycle management...
 

Handruin

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Thanks Chewy. Sounds like Cobbler is what I'm looking for. I'll give it a try and see how it works.
 
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