Katello-agent for Red Hat 8

yuk · April 8, 2020, 1:00pm

Thank you for your answer.
So, is there a katello-agent for RHEL8 or have I to make something on my own to replace it?

Bye

yuk · April 8, 2020, 1:08pm

I can’t find EL8 in https://yum.theforeman.org/client/1.24/

ekohl · April 8, 2020, 2:06pm

Our client tools only started to support EL8 with 2.0 which just went GA yesterday.

ehelms · April 8, 2020, 5:21pm

There will not be a katello-agent for EL8. With dropping Pulp 2, and Pulp 3 no longer supporting this model the project is dropping this functionality and encouraging users to use (Remote Execution)[Foreman :: Plugin Manuals] which features an SSH based ability to execute operations on your hosts. There is also an Ansible plugin for using Ansible based remote execution.

yuk · April 9, 2020, 8:58am

ekohl, ehelms,

thanks for your kind replies.

I don’t understand few things:

if there will not be a katello-agent for EL8, why does RH provide a katello-agent?

root@rhel8:~ # lsb_release -rs
8.1
root@rhel8:~ # rpm -q katello-host-tools
katello-host-tools-3.5.1-2.el8sat.noarch
if there will not be a katello-agent for EL8, where does RH’s one come from?
if there will not be a katello-agent for EL8, don’t we lose something?
i.e. Errata/rpms installed/ecc. ecc.
if

does it mean there will be a katello-agent?

I’m not worried about remote execution, we’ve never used gofer to install/upgrade packages.
We have always used remote excution via ssh.

My perplexity concerns what I loose without using goferd.

Thanks again.
Bye

bagasse · April 9, 2020, 10:09am

katello-agent and katello-host-tools are different things. katello-agent package install goferd, the pulp2 agent. This part (katello-agent) is not available, as ehelms said, but katello-host-tools are present on EL8

yuk · April 9, 2020, 10:54am

On RHEL8+satellite I have both:

rpm -qa|grep katello

katello-agent-3.5.1-2.el8sat.noarch
katello-host-tools-3.5.1-2.el8sat.noarch

I’m confused.

Thanks
Bye

ehelms · April 9, 2020, 12:57pm

At the release of RHEL 8, there were no upstream build roots for building EL8. Therefore the upstream project could not provide any katello-agent EL8 builds but Red Hat could and did which happens with supported products sometimes.

katello-agent only handles performing remote yum actions in a pull-based model. You can achieve the same yum actions with Remote Execution using a push model.

katello-host-tools provides all of the integration with yum and subscription-manager to ensure that package profiles, and enabled repositories are updated inside Katello. Those are the two critical pieces for determining applicable errata. And that is available in our EL8 client repositories.

ehelms · April 9, 2020, 12:58pm

Based on this, you loose nothing. You just need katello-host-tools and subscription-manager. And you may not even need the former if I recall – @Jonathon_Turel

yuk · April 10, 2020, 11:25am

So, is there a repo from which i can get

katello-host-tools for RHEL8/CentOS8

?

Thanks
Bye

ehelms · April 10, 2020, 11:33am

For 2.0, you’ll find it here:

http://yum.theforeman.org/client/2.0/el8/x86_64/

Jonathon_Turel · April 13, 2020, 2:20pm

Correct! Newer subscription-manager versions handle uploading the repo and package data required for errata applicability. katello-host-tools is only required if you want to use the Traces feature.

dcfrmn · April 13, 2020, 7:26pm

Does this mean that the “last checkin” field in the content hosts context will be removed as well? I’m not sure whether this is populated by checkins from katello-agent/gofer, or rhsmcertd; I had always assumed it was the agent.

I realize this is minor, and somewhat duplicated by regular checkins from the puppet agent, but I do rely on this to some extent, and was wondering if I’ll have to make a few adjustments.

Jonathon_Turel · April 14, 2020, 4:10am

Checkins will continue to be handled by rhsmcertd provided by subscription-manager, so nothing to worry about there.

John_Beranek · April 27, 2020, 1:23pm

FWIW, I did manage to get the Katello agent (2.12.1) rebuilt on an Oracle Linux 8 server:

Name        : gofer
Version     : 2.12.1
Release     : 3.el8
Architecture: noarch
Install Date: Thu 26 Sep 2019 11:30:44 PM BST
Group       : Development/Languages
Size        : 31467
License     : LGPLv2
Signature   : (none)
Source RPM  : gofer-2.12.1-3.el8.src.rpm
Build Date  : Thu 05 Sep 2019 02:13:14 PM BST
Build Host  : ol8-test.example.com
Relocations : (not relocatable)
URL         : https://github.com/jortel/gofer
Summary     : A lightweight, extensible python agent

Baefisch · July 15, 2020, 11:14am

Are there any Updates here?
I am able to provision CentOS8 through Satellite 6.6.2, but i cannot install katello-agent at the moment. This agent is only necessary for pushing updates from Satellite/Foreman to the client system, right? Am i able to see the installed package status without katello-agent?

areyus · July 15, 2020, 11:44am

Hi,

yes, the katello-agent package is only needed for the push updates feature.
Every thing else the agent used to do (like the report uploads you mentioned) is now done via the katello-host-tools package. Those use a yum/dnf hook to trigger the upload on package actions.

gvde · July 15, 2020, 1:52pm

As someone mentioned before and what is also shown in the gui of the current version:

“Katello-agent is deprecated and will be removed in Katello 4.0. Consider migrating to Remote Execution.”

So I wouldn’t expect a EL8 version…

Baefisch · July 15, 2020, 2:20pm

Thanks for your answer. Much faster as Redhat!!