Recently I had the problem that my homelab's Linux machines managed by Puppet were generating dozens of error messages when updating the catalog: 1# puppet agent --test 2Error: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib/puppet/parser/functions/load_module_metadata.rb]/ensure: change from absent to file failed: Could not set …

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The last post of this series introduced the software projects Foreman and Katello. If you followed the instructions, you were able to login to a fresh Foreman installation. In this part, the new installation is filled with live: first software contents are added to deploy and manage systems later. If you already had a …

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After a system crash I recently had the problem that Foreman had several orphaned tasks that could not be stopped from the web interface: Because I planned a Foreman upgrade this was pretty bad as it prevented the pre-upgrade check: 1# foreman-rake katello:upgrade_check 2... 3Checking upgradeability... 4Checking for …

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I'm currently working on a blog post series about Foreman, Katello and Red Hat Satellite 6. Here's the link collection for beginners: "Introduction and installation" (also published on Pro-Linux [button size="xsmall" color="red"]german[/button]) "Products, Repositories and Content …

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The last couple of years I spent a lot of time in managing Linux systems with Spacewalk and Red Hat Satellite 5. Because the application was superseded by the vendor, I investigated on migrations to the successor. Back in 2008, Spacewalk was published as upstream project to Red Hat Network Satellite. Since then, a lot …

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If you're utilizing Red Hat Satellite 6 for managing virtual Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances, you will need to leverage Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM) for maintaining licenses. In comparison with the former Red Hat Network Classic licensing, signed manifest certificates are used. For bigger system landscapes …

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Foreman, Katello and Red Hat Satellite 6 users have multiple possibilities to monitor infrastructure health. Beside the Foreman host, also managed systems and defined software content are worth monitoring. Foreman dashboard Foreman/Katello and Red Hat Satellite offer a dashboard with some widgets that can be used for …

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Photon OS is minimalistic RPM-based Linux distribution which is focussed on running Docker containers. It was optimized for VMware platforms (Workstation, Fusion, vSphere, vCloud Air) - e.g. its Linux kernel offers a caching mechanism optimized for vSphere. Another characteristic is the customized package manager tdnf …

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If you're testing the nightly builds of Katello, you might come into a situation where it is advisable to re-install the software completely. As the particular installation steps are automated using Puppet, there is also a dedicated utility which automates uninstalling the software in a clean way: katello-remove. This …

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After upgrading Katello recently, I stumbled upon the following error when accessing the administration interface: The web server protocol told me that a database update might causes this issue: 1# tail /var/log/httpd/foreman-ssl_error_ssl.log 2[Wed Aug 17 09:42:51.536914 2016] [:error] [pid 3178] [remote …

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