Using satellite to bare metal deplpy Xubuntu18.04

Problem:
Getting started documentation doesn’t discuss my exact situation.

We provide custom desktops to scientific users. We have been using VMware but wish to migrate to bare metal install to reduce costs.

We share resources with another group at our host institution and we have collectively purchased Red Hat subscriptions (they use RedHat based VMs, we use Xubuntu). From what I have read, satellite is just a customed version of Foreman, so the goal is to use the satellite instance to bare metal provision Xubuntu. I have created an operating system, set up installation media, but am conceptually stuck on provisioning templates. I have new Dell servers available that will PXE boot.

My specific questions are:

  1. Is it feasible to use the current satellite install as a Foreman provider?

  2. Which provisioning templates should I be utilizing?

Expected outcome:

Able to perform initial install of Xubunt18.04 on bare metal.

Foreman and Proxy versions:

Satellite: Discovery, Dynflow, Ansible, Openscap, SSH, Pulp, Pulpcore, Puppet CA, Puppet, Logs, and Registration
2.3.1

Foreman and Proxy plugin versions:
I don’t know what this means?
Distribution and version:
Not sure what’s being asked here.

It’s because Red Hat does not document unsupported scenarios.

You can do this with Satellite, there is nothing missing in the Satellite distribution, just use Foreman documentation and you should be fine. In Ubuntu case, you want to associate preseed templates (PXELinux, Grub2, finish, preseed) and create Ubuntu OS and you are good to go.

Synchronization of Ubuntu/Debian content might work too, I haven’t tried that, you can use your own mirror too.

I don’t think Satellite ships the required packages and I wouldn’t expect upstream packages to work so don’t expect content management to work. Using upstream mirrors should work though.

One thing to note (and I could be out of date on this) is that I think Satellite is licensed for the number of clients. Be sure to check that out so you don’t run into unpleasant surprises.

1 Like

If you are looking for Foreman/Katello based product with full Ubuntu support, you might want to have a look at orcharhino.