Release Notes
Product features and known bugs for Red Hat Satellite 6.0
Abstract
Chapter 1. Release Notes
1.1. Major Features
- Bare-metal, Private and Public Cloud Provisioning
- Provisioning bare metal systems, private cloud and public clouds including cloud providers such as Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, OpenStack, VMWare and EC2.
- Puppet Forge and Git Integration
- Features for synchronizing Puppet modules from Puppet Forge and Git repositories in Red Hat Satellite 6 provide the ability to manage, promote, and distribute configuration easily across multiple environments.
- Federated Cycle Management
- Red Hat Satellite 6 enables distribution and federation of provisioning, configuration and content delivery through Red Hat Satellite Capsule Servers.
- Drift Remediation
- Red Hat Satellite 6 can define system states and automatically correct system drift state with a complete history, reporting, and auditing of changes.
- Content Views for Life Cycle Management
- End-to-end system life cycle management through collections of refined RPMs and puppet modules that are published and promoted through different life cycle environments.
- System Discovery
- Discover and search across non-provisioned hosts for quick deployment.
1.2. Known Issues
1.2.1. Installer
Make sure that the host system is fully updated before installing Red Hat Satellite. Attempts to install on host systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux that are not fully updated may lead to difficulty in troubleshooting, as well as unpredictable results.
Changes in the katello-installer resulted in a broken initial user seed data which prevents organization and location creation through the katello-installer command during installation. The initial organization and location are currently automatically generated as "Default Organization" and "Default Location" respectively. To create your own organization and location, log in to Satellite Server user interface and click on → and → .
Services failing to start and permissions being denied while installing Red Hat Satellite Server maybe attributed to restrictive umask permissions. Make sure that the root user's umask is set to 0022 before running katello-installer:
# umask 0022
Specifying alternate deployment directories with katello-installer at installation time is currently unsupported. Do not use the following options:
--certs-log-dir When the log files should go (default: "/var/log/certs")
--certs-password-file-dir The location to store password files (default: "certs::params::password_file_dir")
--certs-pki-dir The PKI directory under which to place certs (default: "/etc/pki/katello")
--certs-ssl-build-dir The directory where SSL keys, certs and RPMs will be generated (default: "/root/ssl-build")
--foreman-app-root Name of foreman root directory (default: "/usr/share/foreman")
--foreman-puppet-home Puppet home directory (default: "/var/lib/puppet")
--katello-config-dir Location for Katello config files (default: "/etc/foreman/plugins")
--katello-log-dir Location for Katello log files to be placed (default: "/var/log/foreman/plugins")
When the Satellite Server's hostname contains hyphens, the installation fails with errors. This issue occurs when the domain has no Top Level Domain (TLD). System administrators should make sure that the Satellite Server's hostname includes the TLD. For example:
Hostname without TLD: hostname.domain-example Hostname with TLD: hostname.domain-example.com
Note
# katello-installer --foreman-admin-email=root@localhost.example.com
The installation fails with the error:
Could not start Service[httpd]: Execution of '/usr/share/katello-installer/modules/service_wait/bin/service-wait httpd start' returned 1: Starting httpd: [Tue Jul 22 12:49:31 2014] [warn] module passenger_module is already loaded, skipping /Stage[main]/Foreman::Database/Foreman::Rake[db:seed]/Exec[foreman-rake-db:seed]: Failed to call refresh: /usr/sbin/foreman-rake db:seed returned 1 instead of one of [0]
- Delete or move all of the contents of
/var/lib/puppet/ssl. - Generate a puppet certificate for the host system:
# puppet cert generate $(hostname -f)
- Clear all subsequent backend data stores:
# katello-installer --reset
Warning
--reset option.
katello-installer Does Not Update Network Service Configuration Information for Capsule Servers
Running katello-installer after the initial configuration to enable the Capsule Server's TFTP, DNS and DHCP with the DNS and DHCP arguments, does not update the network service configuration. There is currently an issue with repeatedly running katello-installer that removes the dhcp/tftp settings. There are two options to update these settings after the initial configuration:
- Run
katello-installerwith no arguments. - Edit the answer file
/etc/katello-installer/answers.katello-installer.yamlwith the new configuration options required.
katello-installer
Subsequent reruns of the katello-installer command will change the admin password back to the default admin password regardless of any changes made through the web user interface. If you need to run katello-installer after changing your administrative password, login to the web user interace after running the katello-installer command with the default admin password to change it back to your preferred password.
1.2.2. Capsule
While it is possible to set proxy settings in the Satellite Server, it is only possible to configure the Capsule Server's proxy settings manually. To manually configure the proxy settings:
- Add the extra settings below to the following files in the Capsule Server:
/etc/pulp/server/plugins.conf.d/iso_importer.json/etc/pulp/server/plugins.conf.d/puppet_importer.json/etc/pulp/server/plugins.conf.d/yum_importer.json
Add these settings to the files above:{ "proxy_host" : "proxy_url", "proxy_port" : proxy_port, "proxy_username" : "username", "proxy_password" : "password" }Note
Be careful when editing JSON files. The files must contain all the settings listed above even if the proxy does not require a username or password. Use the following if no username or password is required:"proxy_username" : "", "proxy_password" : ""
- Restart all the Capsule related services.
When using the --certs-tar argument with capsule-installer, make sure that the path to the tar archive is correct. If the filename is incorrect, the error condition that results is difficult to diagnose. Future validation checks will be put in place to ensure that error messages will correctly point out the issue.
Proxy Realm related features can only be deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 systems. Future versions of Red Hat Satellite Capsule Server will be able to run Proxy Realm features on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 system. This operating system requirement is only relevant on the Satellite Capsule Server, host systems can run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
capsule-certs-generate recommends registering organizations with the organization name "ACME Corporation". Users are advised to register their organizations based on a real and valid organization name instead of "ACME Corporation".
1.2.3. Subscription Management
virt-who --satellite on Red Hat Satellite 6
Currently --satellite is only relevant to Red Hat Satellite version 5 and not 6. Users utilizing virtualization and any associated subscriptions that require virt-who should use the --sam option rather than the --satellite option.
1.2.4. Provisioning
Using compute profiles when guest provisioning an ovirt or RHEV Compute Resource causes the installation process to exit without confirming the end of the installation. This causes the kickstart installation to repeat continuously upon reboot. As a workaround:
- Edit
/usr/share/foreman/app/models/compute_resources/foreman/model/ovirt.rband change:def supports_update? true endtodef supports_update? false end - Restart httpd:
# service httpd restart
- Redo the kickstart installation.
1.2.5. Packaging
pulp-puppet-module-builder Fails To Create Puppet Repositories On A Non-Red Hat Satellite 6 System
Creating puppet git repositories fails because of dependency issues and import errors. In order to utilize the pulp-puppet-module-builder command on a separate system from the Satellite Server, subscribe the system to a Red Hat Satellite 6 subscription. This will provide access to the extra packages required to successfully run pulp-puppet-module-builder: pulp-puppet-module-builderpython-setuptools and python-pulp-puppet-common. Enable the Red Hat Satellite 6 repositories and install the packages through yum:
# yum -y install pulp-puppet-module-builder python-setuptools python-pulp-puppet-common
When updating the Satellite Server, pulp or other packages, an SELinux relabel process is involved and may take a long time to complete. If there are a number of packages and channels being synchronized, yum will appear frozen. Continue to wait, yum is not frozen, the relabel process just takes a long time. Estimated time frames maybe more than an hour.
1.2.6. Web User Interface
On the Satellite Server's user interface, search strings with spaces will not return any result. In order to search product names, use double quotes on the product name or provide escape spaces. For example:
"Red Hat Enterprise Server"
Red\ Hat\ Enterprise\ Linux\
When a user re-logs in to the Satellite Server User Interface after an expired session, Satellite Server does not redirect to the previously visited page, instead it redirects to an ajax request page. Future versions will attempt to correct this behavior. In the meantime, upon re-login, enter the top-level address. For example, https://satellite.example.com.
When creating a new content view or changing a content view, the description information is not saved. This ongoing issue will be fixed in future releases. Currently, users are advised to disregard the description field on the Content View publishing page.
Satellite Server will not accept a host name with a domain name that leads with a ".". Satellite Server will declare the system name as invalid. Avoid using domain names with a leading ".". For example, ".mydomain.com".
The Web UI displays a misleading timezone. The timezone appears as GMT, however, it is actually using the timezone that the Satellite Server's system settings are set to. Future updates to the Red Hat Satellite Server will correctly reflect the timezone.
When enabling repositories, issues with pushing content may occur, especially if the Content Delivery Network (CDN) becomes unavailable or if the repositories do not exist on the CDN. The Satellite Server may produce errors that are not immediately obvious. Any failure to enable repositories maybe caused by an error. The Web UI will not report on these errors, however, the errors may appear in the production.log file.
1.2.7. Content Management
Red Hat Satellite 6 APIs that call on method "GET /katello/api/systems (DEPRECATED) List content hosts" may experience performance issues when there are over 300 hosts registered on the Satellite Server. A future release will address this issue.
If a Satellite Capsule Server is physically removed or unresponsive, creating new repositories may hang indefnitely. Note that in cases where the Satellite Server and the Satellite Capsule Server are geographically far apart with slow or low bandwidth between the systems, it is possible that custom repository creation can take a significant amount of time.
- Restart the Satellite Capsule Server so that the Satellite Server can reconnect to it.
- Remove the faulty Satellite Capsule Server from the Capsule Server list:
- Log in to the Red Hat Satellite Server.
- Click → and search for the faulty Satellite Capsule Server on the list.
- On the right-most column of the faulty Satellite Capsule Server, click on the drop-down menu and choose . Click to confirm deletion.
When promoting a large number of content views and the qpid service fails with this operation error:
Starting Qpid AMQP daemon: Daemon startup failed: Queue pulp.agent.5752dc04-7536-4e5c-b406-a0cd5d9c9119: recoverMessages() failed: jexception 0x0104 RecoveryManager::getFile() threw JERR__FILEIO: File read or write failure. (/var/lib/qpidd/qls/jrnl/pulp.agent.5752dc04-7536-4e5c-b406-a0cd5d9c9119/818fa4b0-3319-4478-b2b0-d2195f90f695.jrnl) (/builddir/build/BUILD/qpid-0.22/cpp/src/qpid/linearstore/MessageStoreImpl.cpp:1004)
When attempting to publish a Content View with unsynchronized repositories, the process fails with error "Could not find a published directory".
1.2.8. Configuration Management
A critical flaw has been discovered with Satellite Server 6 on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 host system. When provisioning and configuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 client systems, kickstart %post phase errors prevent Puppet from functioning properly.
Important
1.2.9. Disconnected
While it is possible to set the proxy settings in the Satellite Server, the synchronization server's proxy settings need to be manually configured. To manually configure the synchronization server's settings:
- Log in as root on the synchronization server.
- Add the extra settings below to the following files:
/etc/pulp/server/plugins.conf.d/iso_importer.json/etc/pulp/server/plugins.conf.d/puppet_importer.json/etc/pulp/server/plugins.conf.d/yum_importer.json
Add these settings to the files above:{ "proxy_host" : "proxy_url", "proxy_port" : proxy_port, "proxy_username" : "username", "proxy_password" : "password" }Note
Be careful when editing JSON files. The files must contain all the settings listed above even if the proxy does not require a username or password. Use the following if no username or password is required:"proxy_username" : "", "proxy_password" : ""
- Restart all syncrhonization server related services.
Important
import option, always use the proxy configuration options. The proxy configuration options are as follows:
# katello-disconnected import --help
Usage: import [--manifest MANIFEST]
-m, --manifest MANIFEST Manifest to import - required
--proxy-host PROXY_HOST HTTP Proxy host FQDN
--proxy-port PROXY_PORT HTTP Proxy port
--proxy-user PROXY_USER HTTP Proxy user (proxy username, if auth is required)
--proxy-password PROXY_PASSWORD
HTTP Proxy pass (proxy password, if auth is required)
1.2.10. Documentation
The Satellite Transition process relies on new commands to complete the final stage of the transitioning process to transition host systems from Satellite 5 to Satellite 6. This is described in section 3.7.10 of the Red Hat Satellite Transition Guide . These commands, however, are not available in the initial GA release, but will be available in a future release."
Appendix A. Revision History
| Revision History | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revision 1-1 | Wed Sep 10 2014 | |||
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| Revision 1-0 | Tue Sep 9 2014 | |||
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| Revision 0-02 | Tue Sep 9 2014 | |||
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| Revision 0-01 | Fri Aug 22 2014 | |||
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