RHN Satellite 5.4, first analysis

First of all: Where is the Red Hat Press release? Nada, nothing, nichts (yet)….

History
As I wrote in my previous post, I’ll keep you posted with my latest findings.

In another post, I was speculating about the upstream version. Now, Sat540 seems to be based on Spacewalk 1.2 which is not yet released. I was quite puzzled about that fact. Usually upstream (Fedora) projects are ahead of its commercial counterparts, this time it seems to be the other way round.

Major Features
I was quite guessing right on the expected new features:

  • RHEL6 Support (SHA-256 Checksums on RPMs)
  • Support for importing and syncing of external yum repositories
  • Find duplicate entitlements of systems
  • Oracle 11g support
  • Recording of the install-date of packages

Additionally the following features have been added:

  • Symlink Support in the configuration management
  • SELinux in configuration management
  • Flex Guests enhancements

In contrary to my expectations:

  • For the moment, Sat540 runs only on RHEL5, thus meaning Tomcat5

Cobbler
The included version of Cobbler is 2.0.7. In EPEL5 it is 2.0.3, in EPEL5-test as well as in Fedora 14 beta it is 2.0.5. At least in sat540 it is the same version as in EPEL6-Beta, 2.0.7. The cobbler git repository mentions cobbler 2.1.0. At FUDCon in Zurich I was talking to some Red Hat guys. They told me: The cobbler guy left Red Hat. Hmmm… What is going on?

Real tests and improvements
I was not yet able to install sat540 yet, I’m waiting for the certificate… Nevertheless I made some tests with Spacewalk 1.1 which have been very promising.

At work
Today @work, I just prepared the staging/test satellite for being upgraded from 5.3 to 5.4. I’m still waiting for the new certificate from the Red Hat support. This brings me to another question: Why the heck is a new certificate needed? That’s boring…

As soon as I get the certificate from Red Hat, I’m going to upgrade the Staging/Test Satellite @work, so you can expect more detailed reports soon.

Have fun? I guess yes 😉

5 thoughts on “RHN Satellite 5.4, first analysis

  1. Spacewalk User says:

    I think you will find that as soon as Spacewalk 1.1 is released, they start building the nightly builds using 1.2 package tags.

    • Luc de Louw says:

      Hi,

      Spacewalk 1.1 IS released. And of course nightlies are available. I’m not sure what your point is. Do you mean that it is normal that sat540 has spacwalk-1.2 packages?

      • Spacewalk User says:

        If Satellite 5.4 was branched/based on a nightly snapshot/build taken after 1.1 was released, then yes – it would be normal/expected for Sat 5.4 to contain spacewalk 1.2 packages due to the way spacewalk packages are tagged.

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