Registering SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Expanded Support Clients
This section contains information about registering traditional and Salt clients running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Expanded Support (Expanded Support) operating systems.
Expanded Support clients are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS.
They are sometimes also called SLESES, RES or Red Hat Expanded Support.
You are responsible for arranging access to Red Hat or CentOS base media repositories and installation media. |
SUSE does not provide support for Expanded Support systems on Uyuni. |
Traditional clients are not available on Expanded Support 8. Expanded Support 8 clients are only supported as Salt clients. |
Add Software Channels
For Expanded Support clients, some required packages are contained on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS installation media. You must have these packages installed before you can register a Expanded Support client.
The Expanded Support product is provided by SUSE Customer Center. This also includes the client tools package.
Before you register Expanded Support clients to your Uyuni Server, check that you have the corresponding Expanded Support product enabled, and the required channels are fully synchronized.
You need to select two different sets of channels, one for Expanded Support and the other for the Client Tools.
You will need an activation key associated with the correct Expanded Support channels. For more information about activation keys, see Activation Keys.
The channels you need for this procedure are:
OS Version | Base Channel | Client Channel | Tools Channel |
---|---|---|---|
Expanded Support 6 |
rhel-x86_64-server-6 |
- |
res6-suse-manager-tools-x86_64 |
Expanded Support 7 |
rhel-x86_64-server-7 |
- |
res7-suse-manager-tools-x86_64 |
Expanded Support 8 |
rhel-x86_64-server-8 |
- |
res8-suse-manager-tools-x86_64 |
-
At the command prompt on the Uyuni Server, as root, use the
spacewalk-common-channels
command to add the appropriate channels:spacewalk-common-channels \ <base_channel_name> \ <child_channel_name_1> \ <child_channel_name_2> \ ... <child_channel_name_n>
Add Base Media
The base Expanded Support channel does not contain any packages, because SUSE does not provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS base media. You will need to obtain base media from Red Hat or CentOS, which you can add as a child channel to the Expanded Support parent channel. To ensure you have all the packages you need, use a full DVD image, not a minimal or JeOS image.
You can use Uyuni custom channels to set up the Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS media. All packages on the base media are mirrored into a child channel.
The details you need for this procedure are:
Option | Parameter |
---|---|
Repository URL |
The content URL provided by Red Hat CDN or CentOS |
Has Signed Metadata? |
Uncheck all Red Hat Enterprise repositories |
SSL CA Certificate |
|
SSL Client Certificate |
|
SSL Client Key |
|
-
On the Uyuni Server Web UI, navigate to
. -
Click Create Repository and set the appropriate parameters for the
main
repository. -
Click Create Repository.
-
Repeat for all repositories you need to create.
The channels you need for this procedure are:
OS Version | Base Channel | Tools Channel |
---|---|---|
Expanded Support 6 |
RHEL Expanded Support 6 |
RES6 SUSE-Manager-Tools x86_64 |
Expanded Support 7 |
RHEL Expanded Support 7 |
RES7 SUSE-Manager-Tools x86_64 |
Expanded Support 8 |
RHEL or SLES ES or CentOS 8 Base |
RHEL8-Pool for x86_64 |
When you have created the repositories, you can create the custom channels, one for each repository:
-
On the Uyuni Server Web UI, navigate to
. -
Click Create Channel and set the appropriate parameters for the channels.
-
In the
Parent Channel
field, select the appropriate base channel. -
Click Create Channel.
-
Repeat for all channels you need to create. There should be one custom channel for each custom repository.
You can check that you have created all the appropriate channels and repositories, by navigating to
.
For Red Hat 8 clients, add both the Base and Appstream channels. You will require packages from both channels. If you do not add both channels, you will not be able to create the bootstrap repository, due to missing packages. |
When you have created all the channels, you can associate them with the repositories you created:
-
On the Uyuni Server Web UI, navigate to
, and click the channel to associate. -
Navigate to the
Repositories
tab, and check the repository to associate with this channel. -
Click Update Repositories to associate the channel and the repository.
-
Repeat for all channels and repositories you need to associate.
-
OPTIONAL: Navigate to the
Sync
tab to set a recurring schedule for synchronization of this repository. -
Click Sync Now to begin synchronization immediately.
-
On the Uyuni Server, at the command prompt, as root, copy the base media image to the
/tmp/
directory. -
Create a directory to contain the media content. Replace
<os_name>
with eithersleses6
,sleses7
orsleses8
:mkdir -p /srv/www/htdocs/pub/<os_name>
-
Mount the image:
mount -o loop /tmp/<iso_filename> /srv/www/htdocs/pub/<os_name>
When the image is mounted, you can synchronize the base media. To manually synchronize the channels, navigate to
. Click each channel in the list, and navigate to menu:[Repositories > Sync]. Click Sync Now to begin synchronization immediately. You can also create a synchronization schedule from this screen.Check Synchronization Status
-
In the Uyuni Web UI, navigate to
, then click the channel associated to the repository. -
Navigate to the
Repositories
tab, then clickSync
and checkSync Status
.
-
At the command prompt on the Uyuni Server, as root, use the
tail
command to check the synchronization log file:tail -f /var/log/rhn/reposync/<channel-label>.log
-
Each child channel generates its own log during the synchronization progress. You will need to check all the base and child channel log files to be sure that the synchronization is complete.
The Expanded Support channels can be very large. The initial channel synchronization can sometimes take up to several hours. When the initial synchronization is complete, we recommended you clone the channel before you work with it. This gives you a backup of the original synchronization data. |
Register Expanded Support Clients
Your Expanded Support clients are now ready to be registered.
For more information on registering your clients, see Client Registration Overview.
To register and use SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Expanded Support 6 clients, you need to configure the Uyuni Server to support older types of SSL encryption.
For more information about how to resolve this error, see |