SUSE Manager Setup

This section covers Uyuni setup. You will perform the following procedures:

  • Start Uyuni setup via YaST

  • Create the main administration account with the Uyuni Web UI

  • Name your base organization and add login credentials

  • Synchronize the SUSE Linux Enterprise product channel from SUSE Customer Center

Third Party Software

Uyuni is part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise 4.0 product family and thus compatible with the software shipped with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Uyuni is a complex system, and therefore installing third party is not allowed. Installing monitoring software provided by a third party vendor is allowed only if you do not exchange basic libraries such as SSL, cryptographic software, and similar tools. In case of emergency, SUSE reserves the right to ask to remove any third party software (and associated configuration changes) and then to reproduce the problem on a clean system.

This section will guide you through Uyuni setup procedures.

Procedure: Uyuni Setup

  1. Log in to the Uyuni server and type yast2 susemanager_setup to begin the setup.

  1. From the introduction screen select SUSE Manager Setup  Setup SUSE Manager from scratch and click Next to continue.

  2. Enter an email address to receive status notifications and click Next to continue. Uyuni can sometimes send a large volume of notification emails. You can disable email notifications in the Web UI after setup, if you need to.

  3. Enter your certificate information and a password. Passwords must be at at least seven characters in length, and must not contain spaces, single or double quotation marks (' or "), exclamation marks (!), or dollar signs ($). Always store your passwords in a secure location.

    Certificate Password

    Without this password it will not be possible to set up a Uyuni Proxy Server.

  4. Click Next to continue.

    quickstart mgr setup4 ncurses

  5. From the SUSE Manager Setup  Database Settings screen, enter a database user and password and click Next to continue. Passwords must be at at least seven characters in length, and must not contain spaces, single or double quotation marks (' or "), exclamation marks (!), or dollar signs ($). Always store your passwords in a secure location.

    quickstart mgr setup5 ncurses

  6. Click Next to continue.

  7. Click Yes to run setup when prompted.

  8. Once setup has completed, click Next to continue. You will see the address of the Uyuni Web UI.

  9. Click Finish to complete Uyuni setup.

In the next section you will create the administrator’s account and synchronize with SUSE Customer Center.

Creating the Main Administration Account

This section will walk you through creating your organizations main administration account for Uyuni.

Admin and User Accounts

The main administration account is the highest authority account within Uyuni and therefore account access information should be stored in a secure location.

For security it is recommended that the main administrator creates low level admin accounts designated for administration of organizations and individual groups.
Procedure: Setting Up the Main Administration Account

  1. In the browser, enter the address provided after completing setup and open the Uyuni Web UI.

  2. Add your organization name to the Create Organization  Organization Name field.

  3. Add your username and password to the Create Organization  Desired Login and Create Organization  Desired Password fields.

  4. Fill in the Account Information fields including an email for system notifications.

  5. Click Create Organization to finish creating your administration account.

    quickstart mgr setup admin1

You are now presented with the Uyuni Home  Overview page.

Synchronizing Products from SUSE Customer Center

SUSE Customer Center (SCC) maintains a collection of repositories which contain packages, software and updates for all supported enterprise client systems. These repositories are organized into channels each of which provide software specific to a distribution, release and architecture. After synchronizing with SCC clients may receive updates, and be organized into groups and assigned to specific product software channels.

This section covers synchronizing with SCC from the Web UI and adding your first client channel.

Before you can synchronize software repositories with SCC, you will need enter Organization Credentials in SUSE Manager. These organization credentials (previously called mirror credentials) give you access to the SUSE product downloads. You will find your organization credentials in https://scc.suse.com/organization.

Enter your organization credentials in the SUSE Manager Web UI:

Procedure: Entering Organization Credentials

  1. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, select Main Menu  Admin  Setup Wizard.

  2. From the Setup Wizard page select the Organization Credentials tab.

  3. Click Add a new credential.

  4. In the dialog, enter Username and Password, and confirm with Save.

When the credentials are confirmed with a check-mark icon, proceed with Procedure: Synchronizing with SUSE Customer Center.

Procedure: Synchronizing with SUSE Customer Center

  1. In the Web UI, select Main Menu  Admin  Setup Wizard.

  2. From the Setup Wizard page select the SUSE Products tab. Wait a moment for the products list to populate. If you previously registered with SUSE Customer Center a list of products will populate the table. This table lists architecture, channels, and status information. For more information, see Wizard.

    admin suse products

  3. If your SUSE Linux Enterprise client is based on x86_64 architecture scroll down the page and select the check box for this channel now.

    • Add channels to Uyuni by selecting the check box to the left of each channel. Click the arrow symbol to the left of the description to unfold a product and list available modules.

    • Start product synchronization by clicking the Add Products button.

After adding the channel Uyuni will schedule the channel to be copied. This can take a long time as Uyuni will copy channel software sources from the SUSE repositories located at SUSE Customer Center to local /var/spacewalk/ directory of your server.

PostgreSQL and Transparent Huge Pages

In some environments, Transparent Huge Pages provided by the kernel may slow down PostgreSQL workloads significantly.

To disable Transparant Huge Pages set the transparent_hugepage kernel parameter to never. This has to be changed in /etc/default/grub and added to the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, for example:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="resume=/dev/sda1 splash=silent quiet showopts elevator=noop transparent_hugepage=never"

To write the new configuration run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg. To update the grub2 during boot run grub2-install /dev/sda.

Monitor channel synchronization process in real-time by viewing channel log files located in the directory /var/log/rhn/reposync:

tailf /var/log/rhn/reposync/<CHANNEL_NAME>.log

After the channel sync process has completed proceed to Client Registration.