4.1. Advanced Networking

4.1.1. General

This page details some of the networking tips and tricks in more detail, regarding what you can set on system records to set up networking, without having to know a lot about kickstart/Anaconda.

These features include:

  • Arbitrary NIC naming (the interface is matched to a physical device using it’s MAC address)
  • Configuring DNS nameserver addresses
  • Setting up NIC bonding
  • Defining for static routes
  • Support for VLANs

If you want to use any of these features, it’s highly recommended to add the MAC addresses for the interfaces you’re using to Cobbler for each system.

4.1.1.1. Arbitrary NIC naming

You can give your network interface (almost) any name you like.

$ cobbler system edit –name=foo1.bar.local –interface=mgmt –mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F0 $ cobbler system edit –name=foo1.bar.local –interface=dmz –mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F1

The default interface is named eth0, but you don’t have to call it that.

Note that you can’t name your interface after a kernel module you’re using. For example: if a NIC is called ‘drbd’, the module drbd.ko would stop working. This is due to an “alias” line in /etc/modprobe.conf.

4.1.1.2. Name Servers

For static systems, the --name-servers parameter can be used to specify a list of name servers to assign to the systems.

$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth0 --mac=AA:BB:CC::DD:EE:FF --static=1 --name-servers="<ip1> <ip2>"

4.1.1.3. Static routes

You can define static routes for a particular interface to use with --static-routes. The format of a static route is: network/CIDR:gateway

So, for example to route the 192.168.1.0/24 network through 192.168.1.254:

$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth0 --static-routes="192.168.1.0/24:192.168.1.254"

As with all lists in cobbler, the --static-routes list is space-separated so you can specify multiple static routes if needed.

4.1.1.4. Kickstart Notes

Three different networking Snippets must be present in your kickstart files for this to work:

pre_install_network_config
network_config
post_install_network_config

The default kickstart templates (/var/lib/cobbler/kickstart/sample*.ks) have these installed by default so they work out of the box. Please use those files as a reference as to where to correctly include the $SNIPPET definitions.

4.1.2. Bonding

Bonding is also known as trunking, or teaming. Different vendors use different names. It’s used to join multiple physical interfaces to one logical interface, for redundancy and/or performance.

You can set up a bond, to join interfaces eth0 and eth1 to a failover (active-backup) interface bond0 as follows:

$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth0 --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F0 --interface-type=bond_slave --interface-master=bond0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth1 --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F1 --interface-type=bond_slave --interface-master=bond0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=bond0 --interface-type=bond --bonding-opts="miimon=100 mode=1" --ip-address=192.168.1.100 --netmask=255.255.255.0

You can specify any bonding options you would like, so please read the kernel documentation if you are unfamiliar with the various bonding modes Linux can support.

4.1.2.1. Notes About Bonding Syntax

The methodology to create bonds was changed in 2.2.x with the introduction of bridged interface support. The –bonding and –bonding-master options have since been deprecated and are now an alias to –interface-type and –interface-master, respectively.

Likewise, the master/slave options have been deprecated in favor of bond/bond_slave. Cobbler will continue to read system objects that have those fields set, but when the object is edited and saved back to disk they will be converted to the new format transparently.

4.1.3. VLANs

You can now add VLAN tags to interfaces from Cobbler. In this case we have two VLANs on eth0: 10 and 20. The default VLAN (untagged traffic) is not used:

$ cobbler system edit --name=foo3.bar.local --interface=eth0 --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F0 --static=1
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo3.bar.local --interface=eth0.10 --static=1 --ip-address=10.0.10.5 --subnet=255.255.255.0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo3.bar.local --interface=eth0.20 --static=1 --ip-address=10.0.20.5 --subnet=255.255.255.0

Note

You must install the vconfig package during the build process for this to work in the %post section of your build.

4.1.4. Bridging

A bridge is a way to connect two Ethernet segments together in a protocol independent way. Packets are forwarded based on Ethernet address, rather than IP address (like a router). Since forwarding is done at Layer 2, all protocols can go transparently through a bridge. (reference).

You can create a bridge in cobbler in the following way:

$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth0 --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F0 --interface-type=bridge_slave --interface-master=br0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth1 --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F1 --interface-type=bridge_slave --interface-master=br0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=br0 --interface-type=bridge --bridge-opts="stp=no" --ip-address=192.168.1.100 --netmask=255.255.255.0

You can specify any bridging options you would like, so please read the brctl manpage for details if you are unfamiliar with bridging.

Note

You must install the bridge-utils package during the build process for this to work in the %post section of your build.

4.1.5. Bonded Bridging

Some situations, such as virtualization hosts, require more redundancy in their bridging setups. In this case, 2.8.0 introduced a new interface type - the bonded_bridge_slave. This is an interface that is a bond master to one or more physical interfaces, and is itself a bridged slave interface.

You can create a bonded_bridge_slave in cobbler in the following way:

$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth0 --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F0 \
                      --interface-type=bond_slave --interface-master=bond0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=eth1 --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:F1 \
                      --interface-type=bond_slave --interface-master=bond0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=bond0 --interface-type=bonded_bridge_slave \
                      --bonding-opts="miimon=100 mode=1" --interface-master=br0
$ cobbler system edit --name=foo --interface=br0 --interface-type=bridge \
                      --bridge-opts="stp=no" --ip-address=192.168.1.100 \
                      --netmask=255.255.255.0 --static=1

Note

Please reference the Bonding and Bridging sections for requirements specific to each of these interface types.