Automatic Registration & Subscription during Kickstart?
Hello,
I apologize if this has been discussed before, but I need to find a way to register a Red Hat Enterprise Client/Workstation with our Satellite Server and claim a Workstation subscription automatically, from within the Kickstart or Postinstall scripts, on the basis of a generated key.
Is that possible, and if so, how?
We have been using Scientific Linux as workstations within the company (around 1500 of them), and are working on a project to replace them with RHEL Workstations (a mix of v5 and v6) over the next year or so. The people starting the installation are not Linux-savvy, and we don't want them to have to do anything other than stick the CDROM into the drive and type a simple boot option string to start the desired install. Everything else should run automatically, all the way to a finished Desktop.
Any help would be appreciated.
Wolf
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PREFACE: there are several "right ways" to accomplish your goal. I bring this up in case you find different methods that seem quite disimilar - which may be distracting or discouraging. That said: I believe if I was still consulting, this topic would probably require a fairly lengthy discussion.
It sounds like you won't be using PXE, which is fine. You can create ISOs from your Satellite which can utilize a custom menu based on your kickstart profiles (or you can also roll your own menu).
You can do either (kickstart or bootstrap). I use the bootstrap method, using a case statement based on a number of "environmentals" (i.e. DBA vs WEB vs Infrastructure and RHEL 5 vs 6). However, we have to manually run the bootstrap once the machine is built.
I believe the best case for you:
* create your activation key(s). Mine are named 1-default-rhel6, 1-default-rhel5, 1-dba-rhel-x86_64-server-6 -- the "1" represents our one (and only) organization. Associate the key with the appropriate base and child channel(s) - you can also select a configuration channel for the key.
* create a new kickstart profile. Once that is done there is a tab for Activation Keys - where you can select a key (or several) to associate with that profile. (you can search for rhnreg_ks in your new profile to see where it adds the keys)
* create your boot ISO
If your boot ISO does not do exactly what you want, I recommend manually entering the kickstart "string" at boot time using that same ISO.
Basically the string will resemble:
vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img ks=http://rhnsat01.corp.company.com/ks/cfg/org/1/label/kickstart6 dns=10.98.230.27,10.98.230.28 hostname=rhvsrv91.corp.company.com ip=10.98.196.132 netmask=255.255.254.0 gateway=10.98.196.1 bond=bond0:em1,p3p1:mode=active-backup,primary=em1
Hi Wolf,
As James suggested above, you can create kickstart profile on the satellite server with all required details and use PXE server which is provided by the Red Hat Satellite server. You just need to set "nextserver" as Satellite server in DHCP configuration.
In this case your clients do not need to boot the system from CD/DVD and pass all details required for system installation.
System Provisioning guide should help you.
If you need any further help feel free to open a ticket with Red Hat Support.
Regards,
Ashish
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