Registering Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 Clients

This section contains information about registering Salt clients running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS operating systems.

SUSE Manager supports Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, and 20.04 LTS clients using Salt. For information about registering Salt clients running Ubuntu 20.04, see . Traditional clients are not supported.

Canonical does not endorse or support SUSE Manager.

Bootstrapping is supported for starting Ubuntu clients and performing initial state runs such as setting repositories and performing profile updates. However, the root user on Ubuntu is disabled by default, so to use bootstrapping, you will require an existing user with sudo privileges for Python.

Prepare to Register

Some preparation is required before you can register Ubuntu clients to the SUSE Manager Server.

Procedure: Adding Client Tools Channels

Before you begin, ensure you have the Ubuntu product enabled, and have synchronized the Ubuntu channels for SUSE Customer Center:

You can do this from Web UI or using command prompt, at your choice.

For Ubuntu 16.04:

  • From the Web UI, add Ubuntu 16.04 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Client Tools Ubuntu 1604 amd64.

  • From the command prompt, add ubuntu-16.04-pool-amd64 and ubuntu-16.04-suse-manager-tools-amd64.

For Ubuntu 18.04:

  • From the Web UI, add Ubuntu 18.04 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Client Tools Ubuntu 1804 amd64.

  • From the command prompt, add ubuntu-18.04-pool-amd64 and ubuntu-18.04-suse-manager-tools-amd64.

The mandatory channels do not contain Ubuntu upstream packages. The repositories and channels for synchronizing upstream content must be configured manually.

In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Software  Channel List  All. Verify that you have a base channel and a child channel for your architecture.

For example, for Ubuntu 18.04:

  • Base channel: ubuntu-1804-amd64-main for amd64

  • Child channel: Ubuntu-18.04-SUSE-Manager-Tools for amd64

Procedure: Adding Ubuntu Channels
  1. At the command prompt on the SUSE Manager Server, as root, add the Ubuntu channels.

For Ubuntu 16.04:

spacewalk-common-channels \
ubuntu-1604-amd64-main \
ubuntu-1604-amd64-main-updates \
ubuntu-1604-amd64-main-security

For Ubuntu 18.04:

spacewalk-common-channels \
ubuntu-1804-amd64-main \
ubuntu-1804-amd64-main-updates \
ubuntu-1804-amd64-main-security
  1. Synchronize the new custom channels.

When you have the channels set up, associate each channel with the appropriate repository, and synchronize them. You can also configure a synchronization schedule.

To synchronize the channels, navigate to Software  Manage  Channels, click each channel you created, and:

  1. Navigate to the Repositories tab.

  2. Navigate to the Sync tab.

  3. Click Sync Now to begin synchronization immediately.

  4. You can also setup a scheduled synchronization from this screen.

Ubuntu channels can be very large. Synchronization can sometimes take several hours.

When you have the channels set up, associate each channel with the appropriate repository, and synchronize the channels. You can also configure a synchronization schedule at this point.

To synchronize the channels, navigate to Software  Manage  Channels, click each channel you created, and:

  1. Navigate to the Repositories tab.

  2. Navigate to the Sync tab.

  3. Click Sync Now to begin synchronization immediately.

  4. You can also setup a scheduled synchronization from this screen.

Monitor Synchronization Progress

There are two ways to check if a channel has finished synchronizing:

  • In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Admin  Setup Wizard and select the Products tab.

    This dialog displays a completion bar for each product when they are being synchronized.

  • Check the synchronization log file at the command prompt:

    tail -f /var/log/rhn/reposync/<channel-label>.log

    Each child channel will generate 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.

You will need to check all the base and child channel log files to be sure that the synchronization is complete.

Root Access

The root user on Ubuntu is disabled by default. You can enable it by editing the sudoers file.

Procedure: Granting Root User Access
  1. On the client, edit the sudoers file:

    sudo visudo

    Grant sudo access to the user by adding this line to the sudoers file. Replace <user> with the name of the user that will be used to bootstrap the client in the Web UI:

    <user>  ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/python, /usr/bin/python2, /usr/bin/python3

This procedure grants root access without requiring a password, which is required for registering the client. When the client is successfully installed it will run with root privileges, so the access is no longer required. We recommend that you remove the line from the sudoers file after the client has been successfully installed.

Register Clients

To register your Ubuntu clients, you need a bootstrap repository. By default, bootstrap repositories are automatically created, and regenerated daily for all synchronized products. You can manually create the bootstrap repository from the command prompt, using this command:

mgr-create-bootstrap-repo --with-custom-channels

For more information on registering your clients, see client-configuration:registration-overview.adoc.