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Chapter 25. Register Your System and Apply Subscriptions

25.1. Registering the System

Before you can access service and software maintenance information and enhanced support included as part of your subscription, you must register your new system with Red Hat and associate or attach the appropriate subscriptions with your system.
A Red Hat subscription supplied your system access to:
  • Software updates, errata, and maintenance
  • Red Hat technical support resources and Knowledgebase articles
The Red Hat Subscription Management ⁠Subscription Concepts and Workflows has information on different environments and workflows. The basic registration process (which is described in this section) registers a system with Customer Portal Subscription Management (Red Hat's hosted services) and automatically subscribes the system to the best-matched subscriptions. It is also possible to register a system with a Subscription Asset Manager subscription service, CloudForms System Engine, or to register a disconnected system through the Customer Portal.

25.1.1. Registering at Firstboot

The first time you boot a new Red Hat Enterprise Linux system, the firstboot system prompts you to register the system and auto-attach the matching subscriptions.
Red Hat uses X.509 certificates to identify installed products on a system, the subscriptions attached to a system, and the system itself within the subscription service inventory. There are several different subscription services which use and recognize certificate-based subscriptions, and a system can be registered with any of them in firstboot:
  • Customer Portal Subscription Management, hosted services from Red Hat (the default)
  • Subscription Asset Manager, an on-premise subscription server which proxies content delivery back to the Customer Portal's services
  • CloudForms System Engine, an on-premise service which handles both subscription services and content delivery
The specific type of subscription/content service does not need to be selected; all three server types (Customer Portal Subscription Management, Subscription Asset Manager, and CloudForms System Engine) are within Red Hat Subscription Management and use the same types of service APIs. The only thing that needs to be identified is the hostname of the service to connect to and then the appropriate user credentials for that service.
  1. To identify which subscription server to use for registration, enter the hostname of the service. The default service is Customer Portal Subscription Management, with the hostname subscription.rhn.redhat.com. To use a different subscription service, such as Subscription Asset Manager, enter the hostname of the local server.
  2. Click Forward.
  3. Enter the user credentials for the given subscription service to log in.

    Important

    The user credentials to use depend on the subscription service. When registering with the Customer Portal, use the Red Hat Network credentials for the administrator or company account.
    However, for Subscription Asset Manager or CloudForms System engine, the user account to use is created within the on-premise service and probably is not the same as the Customer Portal user account.
    If you have lost your login or password for the Customer Portal, recover them from https://www.redhat.com/wapps/sso/rhn/lostPassword.html. For lost login or password information for Subscription Asset Manager or CloudForms System Engine, contact your local administrator.
  4. Set the system name for the host. This is anything which uniquely and clearly identifies the system within the subscription service inventory. This is usually the hostname or fully-qualified domain name of the machine, but it can be any string.
  5. Optional. Set whether subscriptions should be set manually after registration. By default, this checkbox is unchecked so that the best-matched subscriptions are automatically applied to the system. Selecting this checkbox means that subscriptions must be added to the system manually after firstboot registration is complete. (Even if subscriptions are auto-attached, additional subscriptions can be added to the system later using the local Subscription Manager tools.)
  6. When registration begins, firstboot scans for organizations and environments (sub-domains within the organization) to which to register the system.
    IT environments that use Customer Portal Subscription Management have only a single organization, so no further configuration is necessary. IT infrastructures that use a local subscription service like Subscription Asset Manager might have multiple organizations configured, and those organizations may have multiple environments configured within them.
    If multiple organizations are detected, Subscription Manager prompts to select the one to join.
  7. If you decided to let Subscription Manager automatically attach subscriptions to the system (the default), then the system scans for the subscriptions to attach as part of the registration process.
    When registration is complete, the Subscription Manager reports the applied service level for the system based on the information in the selected subscription and the specific subscription that has been attached to the new system. This subscription selection must be confirmed to complete the registration process.
    If you selected to apply subscriptions later, then that part of the registration process is skipped, and the Subscription Manager screen in firstboot simply instructs you to attach subscriptions later.
  8. Click Forward to move to the next configuration area for firstboot, user setup.

25.1.2. Registering After Firstboot

The system can be registered using the local Red Hat Subscription Manager tools.

Note

Red Hat Subscription Manager (GUI and CLI) must be run as root.
To register from the command line, use the register command with the --autosubscribe option so that the best-matched subscriptions are automatically attached. For example: 
[root@server ~]# subscription-manager register --autosubscribe
Username: admin@example.com
Password:

The system has been registered with id: 30a3dc1b-db07-4ee7-bfb0-e09504b4033c
Installed Product Current Status:
Product Name:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
Status:                 Subscribed
To register using the Red Hat Subscription Manager GUI:
  1. Launch Subscription Manager. For example: 
    [root@server ~]# subscription-manager-gui
  2. In the System menu of the Subscription Manager window, select the Register item.
  3. Enter the hostname of the subscription server to which to register the system. This server, by default, is Customer Portal Subscription Management (the hosted service), at subscription.rhn.redhat.com. To register with a Subscription Asset Manager server or a CloudForms System Engine server, enter the appropriate hostname.
  4. Enter the username and password of the user account on the subscription service.

    Important

    The user credentials to use depend on the subscription service. When registering with the Customer Portal, use the Red Hat Network credentials for the administrator or company account.
    However, for Subscription Asset Manager or CloudForms System engine, the user account to use is created within the on-premise service and probably is not the same as the Customer Portal user account.
  5. Optionally, select the Skip automatic subscription selection... checkbox.
    By default, the registration process automatically subscribes the system to the best matched subscription. This can be turned off so that the subscriptions can be selected manually.

25.1.3. Unregistering the System

The system is unregistered from a Red Hat Subscription Management service — Customer Portal Subscription Management, Subscription Asset Manager, or CloudForms System Engine using the Red Hat Subscription Manager tools.
For example, from the command line, use the unregister command: 
[root@server1 ~]# subscription-manager unregister
From the Subscription Manager UI:
  1. Launch Subscription Manager. For example: 
    [root@server ~]# subscription-manager-gui
  2. In the System menu of the Subscription Manager window, select the Unregister item.