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. |
You must obtain support from SUSE for all your Expanded Support systems. |
Traditional clients are not available on Expanded Support 8. Expanded Support 8 clients are only supported as Salt clients. |
Server Requirements
Before you begin, check that your SUSE Manager Server meets the requirements at installation:hardware-requirements.adoc.
Taskomatic uses one CPU core, and requires at least 3072 MB of RAM.
To ensure that taskomatic has access to enough memory, open the /etc/rhn/rhn.conf
configuration file, and add this line:
taskomatic.java.maxmemory=3072
Restart Taskomatic:
systemctl restart taskomatic
Add Client Tools
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 SUSE Manager 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 client-configuration:clients-and-activation-keys.adoc.
For Expanded Support 8 clients, add both the |
-
On the SUSE Manager Server, add the appropriate Expanded Support channels:
-
For Expanded Support 6:
From the Web UI, add
RHEL6 Base x86_64
andSUSE Linux Enterprise Client Tools RES6 x86_64
.From the command prompt, add
rhel-x86_64-server-6
andres6-suse-manager-tools-x86_64
. -
For Expanded Support 7:
From the Web UI, add
RHEL7 Base x86_64
andSUSE Linux Enterprise Client Tools RES7 x86_64
.From the command prompt, add
rhel-x86_64-server-7
andres7-suse-manager-tools-x86_64
. -
For Expanded Support 8:
From the Web UI, add
RHEL8 Base x86_64
andSUSE Manager Tools for RHEL and ES 8 x86_64
.From the command prompt, add
rhel-x86_64-server-8
andres8-suse-manager-tools-x86_64
.
-
-
Synchronize the SUSE Manager Server with the SUSE Customer Center. You can do this using the Web UI, or by running
mgr-sync
at the command prompt. -
Add the new channel to your activation key.
There are two ways to check if a channel has finished synchronizing:
-
In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to
and select theSUSE 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 with
tail -f /var/log/rhn/reposync/channel-label.log
file.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.
The Expanded Support channels can be very large. The initial channel synchronization can sometimes take up to 24 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. |
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.
You can use SUSE Manager 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.
Procedure: Creating a Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS Custom Channel
|
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In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to
. -
Click Create Channel and set these parameters:
-
In the
Channel Name
field, type a name for your channel, specifying the OS name and architecture. -
In the
Channel Label
field, type a label for your channel, specifying the OS name and architecture. -
In the
Parent Channel
field, select the corresponding Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS distribution channel for your architecture. The parent channel will not contain any packages. -
In the
Architecture
field, select the appropriate architecture. -
In the
Repository Checksum Type
field, selectsha1
. -
In the
Channel Summary
field, type a summary for your channel, specifying the OS name and architecture. -
In the
Organization Sharing
field, selectPublic
.
-
-
Click Create Channel.
-
Add the new channel to your activation key.
Mount the Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS 6, 7 or 8 Media:
-
On the SUSE Manager Server 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 eitherrhel
orcentos
:mkdir -p /srv/www/htdocs/pub/rhel
-
Mount the image:
mount -o loop /tmp/<iso_filename> /srv/www/htdocs/pub/rhel
-
Proceed to Syncing Base media for Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS 6,7, or 8.
The following steps require you to have mounted the base media for the selected distribution.
-
For Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS 8:
-
At the command prompt as root enter the following to sync the BaseOS channel:
spacewalk-repo-sync -c channel_name -u https://EXAMPLE.COM/pub/rhel/BaseOS/
-
Wait for the sync to complete.
-
At the command prompt as root enter the following to sync the AppStream channel:
spacewalk-repo-sync -c channel_name -u https://EXAMPLE.COM/pub/rhel/AppStream/
-
Wait for the sync to complete.
-
-
For Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS 7:
At the command prompt as root enter the following:
spacewalk-repo-sync -c channel_name -u https://EXAMPLE.COM/pub/<os_name>/
-
For Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS 6:
At the command prompt as root enter the following:
spacewalk-repo-sync -c channel_name -u https://<SERVER-FQDN>/pub/<os_name>/Server/
Troubleshooting Synchronization
Sometimes, the spacewalk-repo-sync
command will stop running during a synchronization, and give this error:
[Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
If this occurs, run spacewalk-repo-sync
in debugging mode to determine the error.
Start debugging mode:
export URLGRABBER_DEBUG=DEBUG
Check the output:
/usr/bin/spacewalk-repo-sync --channel <channel-label> --type yum
Disable debug mode:
unset URLGRABBER_DEBUG
Register Expanded Support Clients
You Expanded Support clients are now ready to be registered.
For more information on registering your clients, see client-configuration:registration-overview.adoc.