EDIT: copied over from community, as it really is a support question
Hi Guys,
For my current environment we want to deploy CentOS7 systems via Foreman/Katello without Internet access.
Cheers!
Problem: Need to install CentOS7 in an environment without internet.
I have synced up Foreman with all the required repos, but when I am observing a OS install (in a lab with internet), I notice the client reaching out to ‘normal’ CentOS repos before installing subscription-manager.
Expected outcome: Install stuff without internet at all
Without internet access I would disable any repo files except redhat.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d.
I personally zero all unused repos out with a simple bash script:
mkdir -p /etc/yum.repos.d/unused
for repo in $(find /etc/yum.repos.d -maxdepth 1 -name "*.repo" ! -name redhat.repo ! -size 0)
do
/usr/bin/cp -f $repo /etc/yum.repos.d/unused/
> $repo
done
How do you do that in the kickstart installation? And does the system that is installing itself have access to the repos inside Foreman without being subscribed?
Ok, so I found the solution. First let me try to describe the problem in a different way, I have been getting advice on how to install Foreman on a system without Internet. While helpful (thanks!), it was not the problem I was seeing.
The problem was, building a new client with Foreman (using it’s deployment capabilities) without Internet was an issue. What happened was the follwing (note, this is in a lab without internet):
Boot new machine into OS installer
Installer started working, installing @Core packages
After installation the ‘redhat_register’ snippet runs, complains that subscription-manager cannot be installed and quits
Host reboots and is not subscribed to Foreman nor has subscription-manager installed.
The solution is very simple! The ‘Kickstart default’ template mentions in it’s ‘packages’ section that it will include any snippet named "template name + ‘custom packages’ " (in this case ‘Kickstart default custom packages’). So I made that snippet and put in the following line
subscription-manager
The result is that the OS installer now includes the subscription-manager package during the first installation of packages (I noticed that the amount of packages installed increased from 319 to 335).
I think the ‘Kickstart default’ template could be improved by always including subscription-manager, as I can’t really think of a scenario where you don’t want to install it while deploying systems with Foreman.
