Validation failed: Name has already been taken, when registering a client

Support
#1

Problem:
Validation failed: Name has already been taken, when registering a client

Expected outcome:
Subscribed

Foreman and Proxy versions:
2.4.0
Foreman and Proxy plugin versions:
Foreman 2.4.0 and Katello 4.0.1

Distribution and version:
RHEL 7.9 (Maipo)

Other relevant data:

Unable to register few RHEL6 servers, below is what I am getting when I run subscription-manager register…

subscription-manager register --org=“Default_Organization” --activationkey=“Activation_key6”

Validation failed: Name has already been taken

Please help.

Thanks in advance,

Best regards,
Balaji Sankaran

#2

Could it be that the host with the same hostname -f exists in your Foreman?

#3

Hello Marek_Hulan,

No, the hostname of the servers which have issues, doesn’t exist in Foreman, have the issues since Katello 3.18, I deleted them to resolve the issues, but it did not work, then I thought it would resolve after upgrading to Katello 4.0.1 and upgraded, but the issues still there.

Best regards,
Balaji Sankaran

#4

Are you really sure it doesn’t exist in foreman? Did you check with hammer?

# hammer host list
#5

Hello gvde,

Yes, I also checked with hammer and it doesn’t exist. Any idea what it could be?

Best regards,
Balaji Sankaran

#6

Make sure to search through all orgs/locs. The hostname must be unique for the entire Foreman DB, which can be unexpected. Best is to try to find it under admin in Any Org + Any Loc context.

#7

Hello Marek_Hulan,

I searched through the organization(in this environment there is only one Organization in the location), I searched using admin account, still no luck. I have 3 hosts with same issues and they are RHEL 6.10.

Please help,

Best regards,
Balaji Sankaran

#8

I’m sorry, I’m out of ideas. Perhaps looks at the database - hosts table and see if there’s this name already used. The validation error is pretty clear, for some reason it thinks there’s already host with such name.

#9

Hello,

I deleted all the hosts in the organization, but still I am getting “Validation failed: Name has already been taken”, wondering why it complains when there are no hosts registered.

Please help.

Thanks & regards,
Balaji Sankaran.

#10

Check the database for any hosts left in any organization and/or location. Run the following as root on the foreman server:

# sudo -u postgres psql foreman -c 'select id, name, organization_id, location_id from hosts;'

It lists all hosts in the foreman hosts database table…

1 Like
#11

Hello gvde,

I ran the command as you recommended and I see the hosts with problems listed along with other hosts. Attached is the command output screen shot, I highlighted the hosts in yellow which have the error "Validation failed: Name has already been taken”.

host-list
host-list1520×263 16.2 KB

Could you please help me remove them?

Best regards,
Balaji Sankaran

#12

I guess that’s rather something for @Marek_Hulan or one of the other developers. There seem to be some hosts in the database which are “half deleted” I guess.

#13

If you want to delete these hosts, perform the following:

foreman-rake console
Host.where(id: [233, 265, 274]).destroy_all
exit
#14

Hi Marek_Hulan,

I tried to delete hosts using the foreman-rake console command, but it is not deleting the hosts.
Attached is the screen shot of the command output.

Please help.

Best regards,
Balaji Sankaran

host-list_after-deletion
host-list_after-deletion1516×385 24.9 KB

#15

For some reason, the search didn’t find any host with these ids (the result was [] which means empty array). Let’s try this first

foreman-rake console
host = Host.find(233)
host.destroy
exit

Recently I’ve seen people reporting having host records using the wrong type. That could explain it. Try also this

# sudo -u postgres psql foreman -c 'select id, name, type, organization_id, location_id from hosts;'

If you’ll see Host::Base in the resulting table, it explains everyting. In such case, this should work

foreman-rake console
Host::Base.where(id: [233, 265, 274]).destroy_all
exit

potentially it could fail with another error on deletion, that’s being discussed at Reports Processing Failure (AssociationTypeMismatch) - #12 by Marek_Hulan

#16

Hi Marek_Hulan,

This worked and the issue was resolved by running “Host::Base.where(id: [233, 265, 274]).destroy_all” in foreman-rake console, there was no Host::Base in the output table for the command “sudo -u postgres psql foreman -c ‘select id, name, type, organization_id, location_id from hosts;’”, but the problematic hosts showing blank in the type column, whereas working hosts are showing “Host::Managed” in type column.

id | name | type | organization_id | location_id
------±--------------±----------±-------------------±---------------
233 | | | 2 | 1
274 | | | 2 | 1
265 | | | 2 | 1

Thank you so much for the help!!!

Best regards,
Balaji Sankaran

#17

Thanks for the details, the empty type is really interesting. Please let us know if you see that happening again, I’d like to understand the real cause. Glad it helped.