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 …

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 …

After a system crash I recently had the problem that Foreman had several orphaned tasks that could not be stopped from the web interface:

<img
  loading="lazy"
  decoding="async"
  alt="Hängende Aufgabe" …</picture></figure></p>

I'm currently working on a blog post series about Foreman, Katello and Red Hat Satellite 6.

Here's the link collection for beginners:

1. "Introduction and installation" (also published on Pro-Linux [button size="xsmall" color="red"]german[/button])
2. "Products, Repositories and Content …

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 Because the application was superseded by the vendor, I investigated on migrations to the successor.

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  loading="lazy" …</picture></figure></p>

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 …

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 …

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 …

After upgrading Katello recently, I stumbled upon the following error when accessing the administration interface:

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  loading="lazy"
  decoding="async"
  alt="Katello error message"
  
    class="image_figure …</picture></figure></p>