We have setup Foreman with Katello on CentOS 7 - master and 4 proxies all connected and happy. This is going to replace our spacewalk infra over the next couple of weeks
Question i have is adding clients. I have tested added some which are running CentOS by installing subscription-manager, connecting to master using activation key, then installing the client software with epel for tracer etc. All seems good. Client info and package updates are showing in the content.
The hurdle I am facing now is to do the same on our OEL 6 and 7 boxes. Can it be achieved in a similar way to the above method?
We generally use Ansible for across the entire setup, but if we can at least get them added and showing up in Foreman that would be great. Remote execution using the agent would be a bonus
Content management doesn’t appear to be an issue. I have setup and synced OEL 6, 7 and CentOS products with numerous repos and Foreman shows successful in the portal.
My issue is purely based on adding the OEL clients and what the process is.
Your subscription part of the post refers says “Therefore you need to play around to get this running for upstream Katello as @John_Mitsch mentioned before.”
That looks to be the same ‘bug’ post. Plus this method to add content filter to remove all rhn related before even attempting to install subscription manager on the client and those links, all appear to be for getting it on Foreman itself. Excuse my ignorance, but I thought we just needed to install it on the end client as a method to connect it up
For all of our OEL machines, the plan was to use Ansible and install subscription manager to connect up to Foreman, then add the agent software
it does see the package:
yum provides subscription-manager
subscription-manager-1.17.6-1.el7.centos.x86_64 : Tools and libraries for subscription and repository management
Repo : copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:dgoodwin:subscription-manager
but when I try to install, I still get the package obsolete warning and it attempts to install rhn-client-tools instead
bit stumped by this. any pointers would be massively appreciated
another update. I managed to get subscription manager on the end client. Removed all rhn* packages, disabled all rhel /epel repos and just had the above dgoodwin repo available, then installed it. re-enabled for the katello agent and tools/tracer packages (as it needed the python and other deps.
Its showing as subscribed in Foreman, however the agent is still showing as not installed. It took a bit of time with the other clients I have before it found it, but its been hours and multiple restarts of goferd not helping
Any thoughts on this part and whether I still need to consider filtering out those rhn packages in the content view for future, would be appreciated
aaaand another update - for those who read in future facing similar/same issues.
Agent was running fine and was able to remotely trigger a package install on the client fine. Read about previous bugs and saw this 1135620 – yum install katello-agent is not updating katello-agent status in UI
Although old and not directly related to the setup, issuing ‘katello-package-upload’ fixes the problem and the UI now report katello agent is running and hopefeully will report ‘installable updates’ shortly.
Such a shame Katello relies heavily on a package that has been made obsolete in EL6,7
Means the ansible steps will be growing a fair bit in order to push this out to all clients.
We have been using Foreman/Katello on OEL 7 for 2 years now. As pointed out in previous messages we also use the dgoodwin repo for subscription-manager and exclude the rhn-client-tools* in /etc/yum.conf and also exclude following rpms in content view.
perfect, thank you. if these rhn packages are already installed on a sample client that we are registering, then is there a need to remove them first beyond just installing sub manager?
Above works brilliantly, but the reason I ask is that I have a client here running same EL7.8 and has rhn* packages there, however when I go to install subscription manager using dgoodwin repo, it doesn’t complain that it’s obsolete and replaced by rhn. Bit strange.
I’m trying to look all the steps and any potential obstacles along the way so we can script together the install process in ansible to connect our 100+ machines up.
We use Foreman with OL7 and OL8 for a long time. I do not use the goodwin repo because its way to old (over 4 years no new builds). I rebuild subscription-manager by myself. Alternative is to get the packages from CentOS and inject them into the repos.
its quiete a while i used OL, i migrated all my systems to AlmaLinux. If i remember right i used mock to rebuild the packages and dependencys, i discarded my build machine for that so i cant check it.
Another way to get subscription-manager is to just download it from Alma or Rocky, keep an eye on dependencys that may be missing in OL. Create a new repo and throw that stuff in there so clients can get new versions of subscription-manager.
