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2.2.2. Registering with Activation Keys

Red Hat recommends using activation keys for registering and configuring client systems that access RHN Proxy Server or RHN Satellite Server. Activation keys can be used to register, entitle, and subscribe systems in a batch. Refer to the section "Activation Keys" in the RHN Satellite Server Reference Guide for more information on activation keys.
Registering with an activation key has four basic steps:
  1. Generate an Activation Key.
  2. Import custom GPG keys.
  3. Download and install the SSL Certificate RPM from the /pub/ directory of the RHN Proxy Server or RHN Satellite Server. The command for this step could look something like this:
    rpm -Uvh http://your-satellite-FQDN/pub/rhn-org-trusted-ssl-cert-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
    
  4. Register the system with your RHN Proxy Server or RHN Satellite Server. The command for this step could look something like:
     rhnreg_ks --activationkey mykey --serverUrl https://your-satellite-FQDN/XMLRPC 
Alternatively, most of the above steps can be combined in a shell script that includes the following lines (note that this command has been split into multiple lines for print and PDF purposes but should be typed as one line at a shell prompt).
wget -0 - http://your-satellite-FQDN/pub/bootstrap.sh | bash
&& rhnreg_ks --activation-key my_key --serverUrl
https://your-satellite-FQDN/XMLRPC
The bootstrap script, generated at installation and available for both RHN Satellite Server and RHN Proxy Server, is such a script. The script and the RHN Bootstrap that generates it are discussed in detail in Chapter 5, Using RHN Bootstrap.

Warning

Systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and versions of Red Hat Linux prior to 8.0 may experience problems using Activation Keys to migrate SSL certificate settings from rhn_register to up2date. Therefore, the SSL certificate information on those systems must be set manually. All other settings, such as the server URL, transfer properly.