A repo is where you store all of the actual bits used by Razor to install a node. Or, in some cases, the external location of bits that you link to. A repo is identified by a unique name, such as centos-6.7. Instructions for the installation, such as what should be installed, where to get it, and how to configure it, are contained in tasks, which are described below.

To load a repo onto the server, use the command,

    razor create-repo --name=<repo name> --task <task name> --iso-url <URL>

For example:

    razor create-repo --name centos-6.7 --task centos
       --iso-url http://centos.sonn.com/6.7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.7-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso

There are three types of repositories that you might want to use, all created with the create-repo command:

• Repos where Razor downloads and unpacks ISOs for you and serves their contents.
• Repos that are external, such as a mirror that you maintain.
• Repos where a stub directory is created and you add the contents manually.

The task parameter is mandatory for creating all three of these types of repositories, and indicates the default installer to use with this repo. You can override a task parameter at the policy level. If you’re not using a task, reference the stock task noop.

Unpack an ISO and serve its contents

This repo is created with the --iso-url property. The server downloads and unpacks the ISO image onto its file system:

    razor create-repo --name centos-6.7 --task centos
       --iso-url http://centos.sonn.com/6.7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.7-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso

Point to an existing resource

To make a repo that points to an existing resource without loading anything onto the Razor server, provide a url property when you create the repository. The url should be serving the unpacked contents of the install media.

    razor create-repo --name centos-6.7 --task centos
       --url http://mirror.example.org/centos/6.7/

Create a stub directory

For some install media, especially Windows install DVDs, Razor is not able to automatically unpack the media; this is a known limtation of the library that Razor uses to unpack ISO images.

In those cases, it is necessary to first use create-repo to set up a stub directory on the Razor server, then manually add content to it. The stub directory is created with the following:

razor create-repo --name win2012r2 --task windows/2012r2 \
	--no-content true

When this command completes successfully, log into your Razor server as root and cd into your server’s repository directory. The repository directory is specified by the repo_store_root class parameter of the pe_razor class. By default, the directory is /opt/puppetlabs/server/data/razor_server/repo.

Run the following:

# mount -o loop /path/to/windows_server_2012_r2.iso /mnt
# cp -pr /mnt/* win2012r2
# umount /mnt

Related links:

• Create a repository
• Repository client commands
• Repository APIs