Passing variables through cloud-init and subscription-manager

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1

We use Cloudformation to build out our instances in AWS. In the template we define the activation key to use which gets executed by Cloud-Init. All this works fine. We further break down all our hosts into 3 different patching groups. Many releases ago of foreman there were ways to link a Host Collection to an Activation Key but no longer. What I would like to do but not sure this is possible is to pass the patching group name through Cloud-Init to Subscription Manager and then into Foreman. If I can get it this far I can then have a cron job or a Foreman job run looking for the variable. If found add the host to a Host Collection group.

If there is a better way to do something like this I am all for it too.

2

How comes you think this is not possible anymore? Linking the hostcollection to an activation key is definitely the way to go here. The official docs on activation-keys are here, and on each activation key you should be able to set host collections to regíster the host to.
While we are currently a bit behind on Foreman updates (running 3.9 currently), we have been using the exact workflow for years without any problems.

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