How to Install Cobbler on nixOS Latest

Cobbler is a Linux installation server that helps you to automate Linux installations. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Cobbler on nixOS Latest.

Prerequisites

A NixOS Latest installation.
A sudo user.

Step 1 - Install Cobbler and Dependencies

Open your terminal and switch to the sudo user account.
Update your system's package list using the following command:
```
sudo nix-channel --update
```
Install Cobbler and its dependencies by running:
```
sudo nix-env -iA nixos.cobbler
```
Cobbler requires the TFTP server, install it with:
```
sudo nix-env -iA nixos.tftp-hpa
```

Step 2 - Configure Cobbler

Open the Cobbler configuration file located at /etc/cobbler/settings and configure it to your needs. Here’s an example:
```
default_password_crypted: "$1$1234567890"
manage_dhcp: 1
system_password_crypted: "$1$1234567890"
```
Note: Don't forget to replace the "1234567890" strings with your preferred password hash.
Restart the cobbler daemon by running:
```
sudo systemctl restart cobblerd
```

Step 3 - Configure DHCP Server

To set up a DHCP server with Cobbler, we should edit the file /etc/cobbler/dhcp.template in your favorite text editor. Here’s an example:

subnet 172.22.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
   option routers             172.22.0.1;
   option domain-name-servers 172.22.0.1;
   option subnet-mask         255.255.255.0;
   range dynamic-bootp        172.22.0.60 172.22.0.250;
   default-lease-time         21600;
   max-lease-time             43200;
   next-server                $next_server;
   filename                   "$pxe_image_name";
}

Note: Replace "172.22.0.0", "172.22.0.1", "60", and "250" with your desired DHCP settings.

Make a backup of the current dhcp.conf file by running:

sudo cp /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf.bak

Fix the ownership of the DHCP configuration file with cobbler by running:
```
sudo chown dhcpd:dhcpd /etc/cobbler/dhcp.template
```

Apply the new configuration by running:

sudo cobbler sync
sudo systemctl restart dhcpd

Conclusion

You have successfully installed and configured Cobbler on your nixOS Latest system. You can now use it to automate Linux installations.