Problem:
I’m searching “the best way” to provision a Almalinux 9 to some Desktop-PCs.
Other relevant data:
In my scenario it’s not possible to use the installation method with pxe (tftp). So I think I will use a USB-Stick.
Foreman is installed and running and I want to provide the Kickstart-file over my Foreman Server.
I read something about the discovery feature from foreman. Is it possible to clone this image to a USB-Stick and configure some discovery rules?
Which is the best way in my scenario?
My second question is that I need some kind of agent on these clients which pulls some (configuration) files from a management Server.
I don’t like puppet and I read something about ansible-pull. Is ansible-pull supported? These Clients are not always on.
You might want to take a look at foreman_bootdisk, which is a plugin explicitly designed for the deployment scenario you are describing.
I don’t know much about the discovery workflow (never used that) and have not had the need for bootdisk, either, so I cannot tell you which of those is the “best”, but at least bootdisk is designed for that use-case, so I would assume it will work best
I have never used ansible-pull (neither alone nor with Foreman), so I cannot comment on that. The Puppet integration works well and Puppet is designed for a pull workflow (other than ansible, which is designed for push workflows).
Check out Foreman Discovery. It provides a bootdisk where the clients boot off the ISO, and then sits and waits for instructions, and then you configure and kickoff the actual install of whatever OS you want from Foreman.
