Cobbler in VirtualBox

Cobbler can help you with all those complicated things for network installation, i.e. PXE, DHCP, etc.

Here is a brief instruction for trying it out in VirtualBox with Ubuntu as guest OS.

To set up the machine running Cobbler:

• Create a virtual machine with two NICs, one of which must be Internal Network (keeping default name), and the IP address could be 192.168.1.2; the other one can be either NAT or Bridge.
• Installation under Ubuntu is fairly simple as always by following this article.
• If you want Cobbler to handle everything, modify /etc/cobbler/settings by changing manage_dhcp to 1, and both server and next_server to 192.168.1.2.
• apt-get install isc-dhcp-server debmirror
• cobbler sync or even service cobbler restart.

To set up a bare metal machine:

• Create a virtual machine with at least one NICs, one of which must be Internal Network (keeping default name); Settings->System->Boot Order, enable Network and put it as the first.
• Boot the machine and you should be able to see PXE menu.
• Then follow standard Cobber document here to play with it.

References

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Cobbler/
• http://www.webscalability.com/blog/2013/03/testing-out-cobbler-with-virtuabox/