Welcome to Cobbler’s documentation!

Cobbler is a provisioning (installation) and update server. It supports deployments via PXE (network booting), virtualization (Xen, QEMU/KVM, or VMware), and re-installs of existing Linux systems. The latter two features are enabled by usage of ‘Koan’ on the remote system. Update server features include yum mirroring and integration of those mirrors with automated installation files. Cobbler has a command line interface, WebUI, and extensive Python and XML-RPC APIs for integration with external scripts and applications.

Content of this Documentation

This site contains the user manual for Cobbler.

If you are looking for guides for developers, please visit our developer wiki on GitHub: https://github.com/cobbler/cobbler/wiki

If you want to explore tools or scripts which are using Cobbler please use the GitHub Topic: https://github.com/topics/cobbler

Here you should find a comprehensive overview about the usage of Cobbler.

• 1. Quickstart Guide
  • 1.1. Preparing your OS
  • 1.2. Changing settings
  • 1.3. DHCP management and DHCP server template
  • 1.4. Notes on files and directories
  • 1.5. Starting and enabling the Cobbler service
  • 1.6. Checking for problems and your first sync
  • 1.7. Importing your first distribution
• 2. Install Guide
  • 2.1. Known packages by distros
  • 2.2. Prerequisites
  • 2.3. Installation
  • 2.4. RPM
  • 2.5. DEB
  • 2.6. Pip
  • 2.7. Multi-Build
  • 2.8. Source
  • 2.9. Relocating your installation
• Cobbler CLI
• 3. Cobbler Server
  • 3.1. Preamble
  • 3.2. Description
  • 3.3. Setup
  • 3.4. Autoinstallation (AutoYaST/Kickstart)
  • 3.5. Options
• 4. Cobbler Configuration
  • 4.1. Configuration Migrations
  • 4.2. Configuration File Reference
  • 4.3. Migration matrix
• 5. User Guide
  • 5.1. DHCP Management
  • 5.2. DNS Management
  • 5.3. Configuration Management Integrations
  • 5.4. Automatic Installation
  • 5.5. Windows installation with Cobbler
  • 5.6. VMware ESXi installation with cobbler
  • 5.7. Extending Cobbler
  • 5.8. Terraform Provider for Cobbler
  • 5.9. Building ISOs
  • 5.10. GRUB and everything related
  • 5.11. Repository Management
  • 5.12. The TFTP Directory
  • 5.13. Internal Database
  • 5.14. HTTP API
  • 5.15. HTTPboot
  • 5.16. Power Management
  • 5.17. Boot CD
  • 5.18. Advanced Networking
  • 5.19. SELinux
  • 5.20. Templating
  • 5.21. API
  • 5.22. Images
  • 5.23. Non-import (manual) workflow
  • 5.24. Virtualization
  • 5.25. Network Topics
  • 5.26. Containerization
  • 5.27. Web-Interface
• 6. Developer Guide
• 7. Cobbler-Code Documentation
  • 7.1. Subpackages
  • 7.2. Submodules
  • 7.3. cobbler.api module
  • 7.4. cobbler.cexceptions module
  • 7.5. cobbler.configgen module
  • 7.6. cobbler.decorator module
  • 7.7. cobbler.download_manager module
  • 7.8. cobbler.enums module
  • 7.9. cobbler.grub module
  • 7.10. cobbler.module_loader module
  • 7.11. cobbler.power_manager module
  • 7.12. cobbler.remote module
  • 7.13. cobbler.serializer module
  • 7.14. cobbler.services module
  • 7.15. cobbler.tftpgen module
  • 7.16. cobbler.validate module
  • 7.17. cobbler.yumgen module
  • 7.18. Module contents
• 8. Release Notes
• 9. Limitations and Surprises
  • 9.1. Restarting the daemon
  • 9.2. Kernel options
  • 9.3. Special Case: Uyuni/SUSE Manager

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page