Are there any good current guides / videos for setting up and using forman?

Tutorials
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So long story short, I was put in charge of setting up a new bare metal rental service and trying to figure out the best way to manage them.

Forman and MAAS were suggested on reddit so I am looking into both. MAAS I can find information on with google but forman is like pulling teeth to find any current info.

Does anyone know of some good guides / videos to give me an idea how it works before I spend a lot of time digging in?

All the links on the site for guides are either dead or outdated unless I am looking in the wrong place?

I did get it installed but I can tell that the first step is gonna be a massive learning curve. Thrown into the deep end with no instructions is never fun.

Or should I focus on another option instead? Any suggestions?

Thanks

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Hi!

The new documentation site is at docs.theforeman.org. I’ll link below to the currently supported versions, Foreman 3.6 and Katello 4.8.

If you want content management, you’ll need Foreman + Katello. You can start with Installing Foreman 3.6 Server with Katello 4.8 Plugin on RHEL/CentOS

(Note that if you’ve already installed Foreman without Katello, you’ll need to start over, since they both must be installed at the same time.)

I would also recommend Ian’s excellent intro video: Introduction to Katello - YouTube

If you only need provisioning and not content management, you can install Foreman without Katello: Installing Foreman 3.6 Server on RHEL/CentOS

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thanks for sharing the links @jeremylenz , if I have already Puppetserver installed, do I have install Katello too or I can have only Foreman/Puppetserver or Foreman/Katello ?

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Great, I will look into that. I am just using a VM for the moment so starting over is no big deal.

Also yes, only need the provisioning side of things and ansible basically, the other stuff looks cool but have not decided if it is something that would be useful in our use case.

Once the system is turned over to the client we will basically not touch it again until they are finished and then we will just wipe it and prep for the next client.

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Katello is not required unless you need content management features. You can use Foreman only, Foreman with Puppet, or Foreman with any other plugins.

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Are there any good basic videos for forman itself?

Even finding the most basic 101 of how forman actually works / how to use it is proving darn near impossible.

The katello video looks good but it is about 5 steps in the future from where I am now, I have no clue how any of the underlying forman stuff works.

The forman youtube channel has a bunch of videos but they are all an hour long and most give you no clue what they contain. Looking for a the most basic of setup/starting guide on what to do once installed.

I will also be using ubuntu for the host as it is what I am used to and what we use for everything else.

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@61796482 on udemy you can find videos for foreman.

@jeremylenz thank you for your answer :slight_smile:

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Did you find any good resources (aside from the ones already mentioned in the replies)?
We basically have the same requirements as you describe, and I can’t manage to get it working.

I found a couple of videos on the topic, but some assumptions seem to be missing. For instance, I followed the documentation on how to install foreman. When I tried to configure a provisioning, I just figured out that the TFTP server was not part of the foreman installation.

Any good tutorial on how to get started would be really nice to have.
On paper, Foreman seem to be doing all we want, but we are stumbling on the first steps…

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Honestly I gave up and just moved to MAAS / Ansible

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Thanks for quick response. It looked promising…