Updating a distro in cobbler

A few weeks ago RHEL 5.6 was released, the installation media was also updated. So it is time to get it into cobbler to deploy the latest dot release when provisioning new systems.

Lets assume your profile name is rhel5-x86_64, you have an existing distro named rhel55-x86_64 and you want to replace it with rhel56-x86_64.

Lets start with importing the new distro:

# Mount the ISO as loop back
mount /some/where/rhel-server-5.6-x86_64-dvd.iso /mnt/rhel56iso -o loop

# Import the Install Media
cobbler import --path=/mnt/rhel56iso --name rhel56-x86_64

Cobbler creates a profile consisting of the name provided at import plus its architecture. We do not want that profile, lets delete it:

cobbler profile remove --name=rhel56-x86_64

The next step is to change the distribution used by the profile

cobbler profile edit --name=rhel5-x86_64 --distro=rhel56-x86_64

If you want to delete the old distro, first check if there is a profile still using this distro, otherwise any childs will be deleted.

cobbler profile find --distro=rhel55-x86_64

If the result is null, it is safe to remove the old distribution. If you want to keep it for a fallback scenario, just omit this step.

cobbler distro remove --name=rhel55-x86_64

Cobbler is just cool stuff 🙂 Want to know more? Visit https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/wiki.

Have fun!