RHN Satellite includes a significant update to the Multiple Organizations feature, which allows administrators to view, create, and manage multiple organizations across the Satellite.

For more information about multiple organizations feature, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Reference Guide.

RHN Satellite now supports automated system installation via the cobbler installation server. Administrators can use Cobbler to store, manage, and automate several aspects of system installation and provisioning, from package installation and channel subscription to DHCP and DNS configuration. Administrators can also use the koan tool to re-provision existing systems and guests in a virtualized system. For more information about using Cobbler and Koan, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Reference Guide.

RHN Satellite now features Inter-Satellite Sync support, which allows Satellite Administrators to synchronize channel content from one master Satellite server to one or more slave Satellites, regardless of location. For more information about using Inter-Satellite Sync, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Installation Guide.

Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3.0 now allows users to install RHN Satellite and RHN Proxy Server server within a VMWare guest system, in addition to support for installation on Xen guests from previous Red Hat Network Satellite releases.

New and updated search features are now available in RHN Satellite 5.3.0, including:

For more information about using search, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Reference Guide.

The RHN Satellite Application Programming Interface (API) has been expanded and now features several new calls, including new calls for the multiple organizations feature, Cobbler installation server, and system and errata search.

RHN Proxy Server now supports command-line installation via the configure-proxy.sh program, which allows administrators to install RHN Proxy Server through a series of interactive prompts. For more information on using the command-line installation program, refer to the Red Hat Network Proxy Installation Guide.

RHN Satellite now supports multiple architectures within a single registered system that is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8.0 or later and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.0 or later. RHN Satellite now displays the architecture of installed or available packages when queried along with package names; and users have a choice to install, update, or remove packages according to architecture.

RHN Satellite and RHN Proxy Server now feature support for SELinux targeted policy in enforcing or permissive on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.0 or later. SELinux is a set of secure software policies that implement mandatory access control to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other operating systems. SELinux is activated by default on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and now users can have SELinux in enforcing or permissive mode with the targeted policy during installation of Proxy or Satellite.

SELinux modules that support Monitoring of RHN Satellite and RHN Proxy Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 are now available. Note that because this feature is a Technology Preview, it may not be functionally complete and is currently not supported for production use.

For more information, refer to http://kbase.redhat.com and use the keyword "SELinux Monitoring".

RHN Satellite now supports Solaris for UltraSPARC T1 (sun4v) and X86_64 processors.

File paths related to the Monitoring feature of RHN Satellite have been rewritten to conform to the Linux Standards Base (LSB). Monitoring files that were once in the /opt directory have been moved to /usr/bin/ for executable scripts, /var/log/ for log files, and /var/lib/ for associated library files.

For example, to execute the script called monitor-queue, instead of typing /opt/notification/scripts/monitor-queue you can now type monitor-queue or /usr/sbin/monitor-queue at a shell prompt.

rhn-proxy and rhn-satellite are no longer running services. All services related to RHN Proxy Server and RHN Satellite functionality (httpd, jabberd, tomcat, Monitoring, Monitoring Scout, and the database service) can be stopped, started, and restarted individually.

You can stop, start, or restart all Satellite services at once using the following command:

 /usr/sbin/rhn-satellite {stop|start|restart}

You can stop, start, or restart Proxy using the following command:

/usr/sbin/rhn-proxy {stop|start|restart}

The default Virtualization Type when creating a kickstart profile has been changed from none (which is no longer an option) to Xen para-virtualized Guest. If you do not intend to creat a kickstart profile for virtual guest, you should leave it at the default and it will not affect your profile.

RHN Satellite no longer supports kickstart distributions located outside of the Satellite server. All distributions must be synced and located on the Satellite server itself.

The Nocpulse home directory has been moved from /home/nocpulse to /var/lib/nocpulse. Nocpulse is now created as system account with uid of less than 500.

An issue has been fixed where Monitoring would fail to run with an external database that had a different name than the database instance name.

Monitoring probes now work even when the SSH daemon has defined banner text.

An issue has been fixed where repomd cache files were broken for custom channels on RHN Proxy on RHEL 5 systems.

To resolve this issue, after reinstallation of Proxy, run the following command:

rm -f /var/spool/rhn-proxy/list/*

Monitoring code has been refactored and all files from the /opt/ directory related to Monitoring have been moved to their proper directories (/etc/nocpulse/, /var/lib/nocpulse/, /var/log/nocpulse/, and /var/log/notification).

Mail for the nocpulse user is now forwarded to root (as defined in the /usr/lib/nocpulse/.forward file).

Monitoring log files now include date and timestamps for every record.

A new configuration option, enable_snapshots, has been added to the /etc/rhn/rhn.conf file. This allows administrators to enable or disable capturing system snapshots. By default, snapshots are enabled; to disable it, edit the enable_snapshots option to the following:

 enable_snapshots=0

RHN Satellite 5.3.0 now has the ability to purge system snapshots via the API.

Subsystem script /etc/rc.d/init.d/osa-dispatcher now returns correct status.

TNSping monitoring probe has been rewritten to work with Oracle Instant Client.

When using Satellite with SELinux enabled, if /var/satellite/ is changed to an NFS mount after the initial installation, you must run the following command:

/usr/sbin/setsebool -P spacewalk_nfs_mountpoint 1