Renew Letsencrypt certificates for Red Hat Satellite 6 and Capsule

Letsencrypt certificates are only valid for just three months. The procedure to renew x509 certificates in Red Hat Satellite 6 is not so straight forward and its even more complex for Capsule servers. In an earlier post I was writing about how to set up a Satellite 6 and a capsule using Letsencrypt certificates. This post is a follow up on that. Be aware: You must follow this procedure before the certificate expires or the Satellite simply stops working, all ….Read More

Installing Red Hat Satellite 6 with Letsencrypt certificates

Red Hat Satellite 6 is a nice tool for system life cycle management. It can get complex and even installation is sometimes tricky. This article is about how to install Satellite, it does not explain the principals and concepts behind it. Requirements A valid subscription for the Satellite (and optional for the capsule). The system requirements are listed here. There is one important thing the install guide is missing: Satellite 6.4 will not work in IPv6 only environments. There must ….Read More

Improve your bash shell working experience

This article shows some hints how to improve your bash shell working experience to reach higher productivity. Just simple shortcuts that are not so well known. Using the History The bash history is underestimated when it comes to usability. Here some nice stuff to do with the history. Search the history Every command is kept in the history. The simplest way to use the history is using the cursor-up/down keys. Most users are aware or [ctrl]-r. Usually you hit [ctrl]-r ….Read More

Upgrading Redhat Satellite 5.7 to 5.8

Couple of days ago, Redhat released its latest and last major upgrade for Satellite 5.x. Its a rather important upgrade, you are advised to upgrade soon. This upgrade contains some major improvements like stated in an earlier article Disclaimer I’m not responsible for any damage caused by the procedure provided here. Always create a backup before even thinking about upgrading a Satellite server. Preparation As always when you plan to upgrade your Satellite server to the latest version, you need ….Read More

New features in Satellite 5.8

Redhat Satellite 5 was released in version 5.8. based on Spacewalk 2.5. It will probably be the last upgrade available, Support ends in January 2019. New features and enhancements The major new feature is the introduction of support for the CDN for both, Satellite activation and content sync. The key benefit is a massively enhanced performance for content sync. It’s now called cdn-sync, not satellite-sync anymore. Be aware that some custom scripts as well as cronjobs must be updated as ….Read More

Using Ansible to automate oVirt and RHV environments

Bored of clicking in the WebUI of RHV or oVirt? Automate it with Ansible! Set up a complete virtualization environment within a few minutes. Some time ago, Ansible includes a module for orchestrating RHV environments. It allows you to automate the setup of such an environment as well as automating daily tasks. Preparation Of course, Ansible can not automate all tasks, you need to set up a few things manually. Lets assume you want your oVirt-engine or RHV-manager running outside ….Read More

Upgrading RHN Satellite 5.5 to 5.6

Redhat released version 5.6 of the Redhat Satellite. Time to have a closer look to it and how to upgrade from version 5.5. New features Finally PostgreSQL support is mature enough for Enterprise usage. No need of a closed source data base anymore. This also brings a lot of new capabilities such as online backups which before was only available using an external Oracle Database which needs the availability of a DBA. PostgreSQL also brings some performance benefits over the ….Read More

Host based access control with IPA

Host based access control is easy with IPA/FreeIPA, very easy. Lets assume you want to have a host group called rhel-prod, a usergroup called prod-admins and you want to let them access the servers in the rhel-prod group by ssh from any host that can reach the servers. Lets call the HBAC rule prod-admins. You can either user the web GUI or use the command line interface. Lets create the user group: [root@ipa1 ~]# ipa group-add prod-admins –desc=”Production System Admins” ….Read More