Chapter 18. System and Subscription Management

The default registration URL is now subscription.rhsm.redhat.com

Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3, the default registration URL has been changed to subscription.rhsm.redhat.com. (BZ#1396085)

subscription-manager displays all addresses associated with a network interface

Previously, the subscription-manager utility displayed only one address per network interface even if the network interface had more than one associated address. With this update, a new system fact with the suffix _list corresponding to each network interface is reported to the entitlement server that contains a comma-separated string of values. As a result, subscription-manager is now able to display all addresses associated with the network interface. (BZ#874735)

rct now enables displaying only subscription data

The rct utility now accepts the --no-content option. Passing --no-content to the rct cat-manifest command ensures that rct displays only subscription data. (BZ#1336883)

rct cat-manifest now displays information to determine if virt-who is required

The output of the rct cat-manifest [MANIFEST_ZIP] command now includes fields for Virt Limit and Requires Virt-who. These fields help determine if the virt-who component is required for the deployment. (BZ#1336880)

The needs-restarting utility has the new --services option

With this update, the needs-restarting utility has the new --services option. When the new option is specified, needs-restarting lists newline-separated service names instead of process IDs. This helps the system administrator to find out which systemd services they need to restart after running yum update to benefit from the updates. (BZ#1335587)

The needs-restarting utility has the new --reboothint option

With this update, the needs-restarting utility has the new --reboothint option. Running needs-restarting --reboothint outputs a message saying which core packages have been updated since the last boot, if any, and thus whether a reboot is recommended. This helps the system administrator to find out whether they need to reboot the system to benefit from all updates. Note that the advice is only informational and does not mean it is strictly necessary to reboot the system immediately. (BZ#1192946)

New skip_missing_names_on_install and skip_missing_names_on_update options for yum

The skip_missing_names_on_install and skip_missing_names_on_update options have been added to yum repository configuration. With skip_missing_names_on_install set to False in the /etc/yum.conf file, using the yum install command fails if yum cannot find one of the specified packages, groups, or RPM files. With skip_missing_names_on_update set to False, using the yum update command fails if yum cannot find one of the specified packages, groups, or RPM files, or if they are available, but not installed. (BZ#1274211)

New compare_providers_priority option for yum

This update adds the compare_providers_priority option to yum repository configuration. When set in the /etc/yum.conf file, this option enables yum to respect repository priorities when resolving dependencies, which can be used to influence what yum does when it encounters a dependency that can be satisfied by packages from multiple different repositories. (BZ#1186690)