Red Hat Enterprise Linux Site License Public Documentation
What you get under the Site License
- Local Red Hat Network Satellite Service
- Local Software channels available through up2date
- Kickstart installs
- On campus ISO mirror
What software products we have for end users:
- Red Hat Desktop 3 for x86 and x86_64/EMT64
- Red Hat Desktop 4 for x86 and x86_64/EMT64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 AS, ES, and WS for x86, x86_64/EMT64, and iSeries/pSeries
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS, ES, and WS for x86, x86_64/EMT64, and iSeries/pSeries
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Client and Server for x86, x86_64
What we don't have
(please contact msd@uga.edu for more information
about purchasing these products and having them delivered though the satellite
to you.)
- Red Hat Application Server
- Red Hat Global File System (GFS)
- Red Hat Portal Server
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux for s/390
Licensing:
Where I can I install stuff and what am I entitled to?
- UGA Owned computers can run all RHEL and Desktop products.
- Student / Faculty / Staff Personally owned machines can run RHEL
WS and Desktop products only.
Policies:
What can I do / not do?
- Do not share activation keys. If it's found that you are
sharing your activation key, your machine(s) will be removed from
the satellite and your account will be terminated.
- Inactive systems (eg machines not checking in) are deleted after
30 days.
- If your machine is registered against a user account,
you will receive a warning notice about this every day beginning 7 days
prior to deletion.
- If you are a keyed user only, you machine will simply
be removed after 30 days.
- Improperly registered machines will be removed within 24 hours.
- Machines found to be registered to the Satellite but
not associated with a group or activation key will simply be removed within
24 hours of registration.
Getting an RHN Website account:
You must
- Be affiliated with a group, institute or unit
- Have (or intend to have at deployment time) at least
6 machines to be eligible for a rhn.uga.edu website account. People
using less than 6 machines may appeal for an account under some circumstances. Please send an email to helpdesk@uga.edu to request your account
or appeal
- Please include in this mail:
- Number of machines you have or intend to use
- Your name and full contact information
- Your affiliation with UGA
- Desired login
- MSD/EITS retains the right to revoke rhn.uga.edu website
accounts of those not using more than 6 machines at any time.
- Student Activation keys are recycled every 6 months to prevent
over use. Machines registered with these keys will be unregistered
from rhn.uga.edu and will require manual re-registration.
Importation of site licensed and other commercial software into
the Satellite.
- MSD/EITS will not, under any circumstances,
import any software into the satellite that may not be freely distributed.
Downtime:
- The rhn.uga.edu service has a standing weekly downtime
window of 2:00 AM 7:00 AM Eastern (GMT-5) every Thursday
morning. EITS/MSD may or may not make use of this time
to perform maintenance to the system as needed. When
and where possible EITS/MSD will make a best effort to notify end
users (via the UGGRHEL@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU mailing list) of planned
work during this downtime window; however, we advise to users not
plan their own maintenance or other business functions that may
depend on the rhn.uga.edu service during this window.
- Additionally, there is daily standing downtime
window for backups from 2:00 AM to 4:00 Eastern (GMT-5). Operationally,
the service should only be unavailable for a few minutes; however,
we reserve a full 2 hour window to account for scheduling and
troubleshooting, if needed.
Updates and patches:
Where, how and why?
Setup for UGA Satellite: Using the local UGA Satellite requires a small amount
of ground work. Please see the "Getting Started" and "Transition" sections
for more details.
How to patch:
Command Line
up2date is the command you use to retrieve and install
software, including update packages. The simple rundown is:
- Install any package: up2date -i
- Install pending updates: up2date -u
- Install all pending updates, ignoring the
skiplist: up2date -fu
- Never, ever use a GUI: up2date --nox
- up2date by default will cowardly refuse to install kernel
related updates by putting the kernel packages on the skiplist. The "-f" switch
tells up2date to ignore the skiplist and will install updated
kernels. See up2date(8) for more info.
GUI.
Simply run up2date. This will present a wizard
that will list any updates and offer to install them.
NOTE: Some versions of up2date's GUI have the text "rhn.redhat.com" hard-coded into the dialog windows, please ignore this, it is a bug which Red Hat is working on. If you have followed the steps in the "Getting Started" and "Transitions" sections, you are using the
UGA Satellite.
RHN Website
Log into https://rhn.uga.edu/ Once
logged in you'll be presented with a list of your systems and how many patches they require. Patches
are applied by scheduling them to happen at a particular
time. Once the scheduled point-in-time occurs, they are available to
be picked up by the client system during the regular check-in period. Updates
my be schedule in one of two way, per-machine, or per-errata.
- Per-Machine Scheduling:
- Click "Systems" from the top menu
- Click on the system you'd like to patch
- Click "Errata" from the hosts' submenu
- Check off the errata you would like to
apply to this host
- Click the "Apply Errata" button at the
bottom of the page
- Double check your work, and then click
the "Confirm" button
- Per-Errata Scheduling:
- Click "Errata" from the top menu
- Click the errata you'd like to apply
- Click "Affected Systems" from the Errata
submenu
- Check off the Hosts you would like to apply
this errata to
- Click the "Apply Errata" button Double check your work, and then click
the "Confirm" button
- You can check the progress of scheduled actions though
the "Schedule" item in the top menu.
General thoughts on patching:
Red Hat's QA process produces some fine patches; however,
on occasion some bug will slip though the process unnoticed. It's
sometimes best to wait a day or two after a patch has been announced to
see if does contain bugs and needs to be pulled or re-issued. Also note that
while security errata address specific issues with minimalistic back-ported
patches, the Quarterly Updates can provide new versions of packages to address
Feature Requests and general Bug fixes. Care should be applied when using Quarterly
Updates.
Getting Started:
The basic info to start using RHEL quickly
- Get the ISO's for install: ftp://ftp.uga.edu/ugaonly/rhel-iso (on campus
only) https://ftp.uga.edu/ugaonly/rhel-iso
- If you have more than 6 machines, request a RHN Website account. See
the "Policies" section above for details. You may also
ask for kickstart configurations at that time.
- Install! (See https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/for installation guides for your chosen product.)
- If you boot in gui mode you'll be asked to register with RedHat; press ctrl-alt-backspace to restart the gui and continue with these instructions.
- Bootstrap! See the "Transition" section for bootstrap details.
- Get the Applet Working (if you need it)
- All systems (cli/gui)
- Ensure the machine is registered and looking at rhn.uga.edu
- Subscribe your system to the correct "Red Hat Network
Tools" channel eg: for a RHEL-3-x86-WS system, subscribe
to the "Red Hat Network Tools for RHEL 3 WS (i386)" channel. The
respective channel will pop up as a child channel for your flavor in the Channel's
listing. Additionally, you can subscribe to child channels by clicking
the "Channels" tab on any host details page. Install the rhn-applet-actions package (up2date -i
rhn-applet-actions)
- CLI method:
- Run the following command (it's one line, beware wrapping)
- PYTHONPATH=/usr/share/rhn/actions python
-c "import rhn_applet; rhn_applet.use_satellite ();"
- GUI:
- Following the instructions here:
- http://rhn.uga.edu/help/client-config/latest-clients-applet.html
- Checking that this is truly working:
- Run rhn-applet-tui to see if things are working
- Restart rhn-applet in your desktop and see if it's happy
- Check the file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/rhn-applet and ensure that
it points at rhn.uga.edu
Transition:
Move from Red Host Hosted RHN to UGA Satellite server or
register a box installed form the ISO's.
- Bootstrap Method:
- Go to: https://www.uga.edu/eits/rhn/keys
- Select your organization (Student/Fac/Staff Personal
Use, or
- department)
- Copy the bootstrap.sh script to your local machine
- Obtain your Activation key
- run the bootstrap.sh script as root:
- su -c "bash ./bootstrap.sh your_activation_key_here"
- Manual Method: TBA..
Special Features:
More than just patches!
Users with more than 6 machines who have a RHN website account can also utilize the following features.
- Provisioning Features
- Kickstart Installs*
- Custom Software Channels*
- Custom Information*
- Config Management*
- Remote Commands
- Instant command execution
- Management Features
- System Groups
- Scheduling software install / removals
- System Groups
[* Denotes a feature requiring request for activation though the
Helpdesk ]
Support:
I Need Help!
We do not offer direct end-user support for the operation, setup, config, management or administration of RHEL products. Here are some links to the local Linux and Red Hat communities.
Sources:
This *is* OpenSource, right?
Sources for RHEL are not presently available through the Satellite. We
do
mirror them directly from Red Hat's FTP site and are available for your
usage.
- Via HTTP:
- Via FTP:
- Base OS Releases: ftp://ftp.uga.edu/redhat/linux/enterprise/
- All Updates: ftp://ftp.uga.edu/redhat/linux/updates/enterprise/
