What can Spacewalk do:
- YUM repository Server, which is connected by client via yum-rhn-plugin
- Provision, kickstart, physical or virtual systems (using cobbler)
- Manage and deploy configuration files, software to a group of servers
- Monitor your systems (CPU, disk space etc .. ), Inventory your systems (hardware and software information)
OS supported by Spacewalk:
- Red Hat Linux derivatives (Centos, Fedora, Scientific Linux) and Solaris
- Limited support for SUSE Linux (AutoYaST Support is planned in V1.5, https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/roadmap )
- Experimental support for Debian (https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/Deb_support_in_spacewalk )
This post is not a complete guide for spacewalk install and administartion, its goal is to PXE kickstart a pysical server and have it registered to spacewalk server when kickstart complete. Kickstarting a server is easy but having it registered to spacewalk server needs tweaking.
Useful document for Spacewalk:
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PackageManagement/Spacewalk
https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/UserDocs
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Network_Satellite/index.html
This post demonstrate spacewalk 1.4 kickstarting Centos 5.5 i386
Steps Summary:
- Setup PXE boot server environment
- Create OS base channel
- Create child channel(tools channel)
- Create distribution tree
- Create activation key
- Create kickstart profile
Setup PXE boot server environment
Setup tftp and dhcpd, refer to http://honglus.blogspot.com/2011/06/setup-pxe-boot-server-for-linux-server.html
However, you don't bother editing pxelinux.cfg/default, which will be managed by spacewalk.
Create OS base channel
Navigate to: Channels | Manage software channels | Create new channel
Channel label is significant, It is channel label, not channel name, is referred for channel operations.
For GPG key section, refer to “GPG Sign RPM file” http://honglus.blogspot.com/2011/05/build-rpm-from-source-file.html
The GPG pub key need to copied to “/var/www/html/pub”, which can be downloaded by http://Server/pub/MY-GPG-FILE-NAME
Create child channel(tools channel)#Import OS rpms to OS Base channel#Before importing rpms, it is recommended to resign all rpms with your own GPG key “ rpm –resign *.rpm”, otherwise you need to import the rpm's original GPG key to all clients.$spacewalk-repo-sync -c channel-label –-url http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/i386/# You can also import rpms in installation media by –url file:///media/cdrom
Create a child channel for the Base channel created in last step, using same GPG information
Create distribution tree#import spacewalk client rpms to the child channel$spacewalk-repo-sync -c child-channel-label –-url http://spacewalk.redhat.com/yum/1.4-client/RHEL/5/i386/#python-ethtool doesn't exist in above sites, you need to download it manually from EPEL repository http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL#import a single rpm to the child channel$rhnpush -c child-channel-label -u satadmin python-ethtool*.rpm
Distribution hold installation files e.g. “images/stage2.img”, which can't be imported to spacewalk channel
Navigate to: Systems | Kickstart | Distributions | Create new distribution#Create distribution tree path$mkdir -p /var/distro-trees/centos-32-5.5#Copy everything in installation media except for rpm files to the dir#rpm files will be retrieved from channels$cd /media/cdrom; find . ! -path "./CentOS/*" | cpio -pvd /var/distro-trees/centos-32-5.5
Create activation key
Activation key is bound to base channel and entitlements, it is used by client to register to spacewalk without password authentication.
Navigate to: Systems | Activation Keys | Create new Key
Select the base channel and enable provisioning add-on entitlements
In child channels, select the child channel.
Optionally, if you want to pull configuration file e.g /etc/ntp.conf during kickstart, you need to create configuration channel and bind the activation key
Create kickstart profile
Navigate to: Systems | Kickstart | Create new kickstart profile
In operating systems, select base channel and child channel
In Software,enter the following packages in addition to @ Base
rhn-checkrhn-setupyum-rhn-pluginpython-ethtoolpython-dmidecoderhncfg-clientrhncfg-actions#Above packages provide rhnreg_ks and rhn_check to register to spacewalk during kickstart, otherwise kickstart postscript will encounter errors:/tmp/ks-script-KOlpXy: line 128: rhnreg_ks: command not found/tmp/ks-script-KOlpXy: line 134: rhn_check: command not found#You can also write your own snipplets in “/var/lib/cobbler/snippets” to add packages dynamically.
In Activation Keys, select the activation key
Once kickstart profile is created, some entries are added to pxe configuration file
/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
Power on the server to be provisioned, when kickstart completed, It should be registered and appeared in spacewalk.
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