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Chapter 6. Entitlements

Red Hat manages customer entitlements through subscriptions. When you purchase a subscription, it entitles you to install and use one or more Red Hat products, and receive technical support directly from Red Hat. An active subscription provides access to one or more software repositories, including applicable errata.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems registered to Red Hat Subscription Management obtain software subscriptions directly from the Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN). Systems registered to Red Hat Satellite instead obtain software subscriptions from the Satellite server. To provide subscriptions to registered hosts, a Satellite server must have the required subscriptions available. These subscriptions are packaged in a manifest file, which must be downloaded from the Red Hat Customer Portal, and uploaded to Satellite. For hosts registered to the Satellite server, subscriptions are managed via the Satellite web UI.
The Red Hat Satellite 5.8 installer requires a manifest file to activate it. A manifest file contains details of subscriptions, products, and content repositories. Activation entitles the Satellite server to synchronize content from the Red Hat CDN. The repositories available to Satellite are determined by the active manifest. Satellite is activated on installation, but over the lifespan of a Satellite installation, the manifest may need to be updated. It is also sometimes necessary to query the activate manifest. Common use cases for updating and querying the active manifest are covered in this section.

6.1. Activating Satellite

Sometimes it is necessary to query, or refresh the available subscriptions. Common use cases for managing subscriptions include the following:
  • Satellite was not activated on installation, and now you need to activate it.
  • You need details of the active manifest, including the quantity of subscriptions, their expiry date, and the products included.
  • You have changed subscriptions and need these changes applied to Satellite.
  • Product entitlements have been changed by Red Hat, and these changes need to be reflected in Satellite. For example, SKU, products, and associated repositories are sometimes changed by Red Hat. These changes are reflected automatically in the Red Hat Customer Portal, but Satellite must be refreshed manually.
Included in this section are example use cases, and instructions on how to complete them. There is some variation to these procedures, depending on Satellite being either in connected or disconected mode. Most of these use cases require the CLI tool rhn-satellite-activate. For details on rhn-satellite-activate, append --help, or view the man page by entering the command man rhn-satellite-activate.

Procedure 6.1. Activating Red Hat Satellite via the Satellite web UI

Prerequisite

Create the manifest on the Red Hat Customer Portal, then download the manifest file to your computer. For details, see Section 3.1.3, “Generating a Manifest”.

  1. Login to the Satellite 5 server web UI, click on Admin, then Red Hat Satellite Configuration and click Manifest.
  2. Click Choose file:, select the manifest file, then click Update.
    When the update completes, the message Manifest uploaded. Red Hat Satellite has been re-activated. indicates it has been successful.

Procedure 6.2. Activating Red Hat Satellite via the Command Line

Prerequisite

Create the manifest on the Red Hat Customer Portal, download the manifest file to your computer, then copy it to the Satellite server. For details, see Section 3.1.3, “Generating a Manifest”.

  • Activate Red Hat Satellite.
    1. Run the following command if Satellite is in connected mode. 
      # rhn-satellite-activate --manifest=manifest_file.zip
    2. Run the following command if Satellite is in disconnected mode. 
      # rhn-satellite-activate --disconnected --manifest=manifest_file.zip

Note

When activating Satellite with a new manifest as part of a Satellite upgrade, you need to add the --ignore-version-mismatch option to the rhn-satellite-activate command. See Chapter 10, Upgrades and /etc/sysconfig/rhn/satellite-upgrade/README for more information.
Once Red Hat Satellite is activated, it serves packages locally and, if in connected mode, synchronizes with the Red Hat Content Delivery Network. See Chapter 8, Content and Synchronization for more information.