Dokumentace systému SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop › Deployment Guide › Manual Deployment › Subscription Management
ContentsContents
Deployment Guide
  1. About This Guide
  2. 1 Planning for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
  3. I Manual Deployment
    1. 2 Deployment Strategies
    2. 3 Installation with YaST
    3. 4 Updating SUSE Linux Enterprise
    4. 5 Setting Up Hardware Components with YaST
    5. 6 Installing or Removing Software
    6. 7 Installing Add-On Products
    7. 8 Installing Multiple Kernel Versions
    8. 9 Managing Users with YaST
    9. 10 Changing Language and Country Settings with YaST
    10. 11 Remote Installation
    11. 12 Advanced Disk Setup
    12. 13 Subscription Management
  4. II Imaging and Creating Products
    1. 14 Creating Add-on Products With Add-on Product Creator
    2. 15 Creating Images with YaST Product Creator
    3. 16 Creating Images with YaST Image Creator
    4. 17 Deploying Customized Preinstallations
  5. III Automated Installations
    1. 18 Automated Installation
    2. 19 Automated Deployment of Preload Images
  6. A Documentation Updates
  7. B GNU Licenses
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Dokumentace systému SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop › Deployment Guide › Manual Deployment › Subscription Management
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Applies to SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12

13 Subscription Management

13.1 Using Kernel Parameters to Access an SMT Server
13.2 Configuring Clients Using AutoYaST Profile
13.3 Configuring Clients Using the clientSetup4SMT.sh Script
13.4 Registering Clients Against an SMT Test Environment

Any machine running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 can be configured to register against local Subscription Management Tool server to download software updates instead of communicating directly with the SUSE Customer Center and the NU servers. To use an SMT server for client registration and as a local update source, you must configure the SMT server in your network first. The SMT server software is distributed as an add-on for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and its configuration is described in the Subscription Management Tool Guide. There is no need to install any add-on on the clients to be configured for registering against an SMT server.

To register a client against an SMT server, you need to equip the client with the server's URL. As client and server communicate via the HTTPS protocol during registration, you also need to make sure the client trusts the server's certificate. In case your SMT server is set up to use the default server certificate, the CA certificate will be available on the SMT server via HTTP protocol at http://FQDN/smt.crt. In this case you do not need to concern yourself with the certificate: the registration process will automatically download the CA certificate from there, unless configured otherwise. You must enter a path to the server's CA certificate if the certificate was issued by an external certificate authority.

There are several ways to provide this information and to configure the client machine to use SMT. The first way is to provide the needed information via kernel parameters at boot time. The second way is to configure clients using an AutoYaST profile. There is also a script distributed with Subscription Management Tool, clientSetup4SMT.sh, which can be run on a client to make it register against a specified SMT server. These methods are described in the following sections:

13.1 Using Kernel Parameters to Access an SMT Server

Any client can be configured to use SMT by providing the following kernel parameters during machine boot: regurl and regcert. The first parameter is mandatory, the latter is optional.

regurl

URL of the SMT server. The URL needs to be in the following format: https://FQDN with FQDN being the fully qualified host name of the SMT server. It must be identical to the FQDN of the server certificate used on the SMT server. Example: 

regurl=https://smt.example.com
Warning
Warning: Beware of Typing Errors

Make sure the values you enter are correct. If regurl has not been specified correctly, the registration of the update source will fail.

Warning
Warning: Change of SMT Server Certificate

If the SMT server gets a new certificate from a new and untrusted CA, the clients need to fetch the new CA certificate file. This is done automatically with the registration process but only if a URL was used at installation time to retrieve the certificate, or if the regcert parameter was omitted and thus, the default URL is used. If the certificate was loaded using any other method (such as local path), the CA certificate will not be updated.

13.2 Configuring Clients Using AutoYaST Profile

Clients can be configured to register with SMT server via AutoYaST profile. For general information about creating AutoYaST profiles and preparing automatic installation, refer to Chapter 18, Automated Installation. In this section, only SMT specific configuration is described.

To configure SMT specific data using AutoYaST, follow these steps:

  1. As root, start YaST and select Miscellaneous › Autoinstallation to start the graphical AutoYaST front-end.

    From a command line, you can start the graphical AutoYaST front-end with the yast2 autoyast command.

  2. Open an existing profile using File › Open, create a profile based on the current system's configuration using Tools › Create Reference Profile, or work with an empty profile.

  3. Select Support › SUSE Customer Center Configuration. An overview of the current configuration is shown.

  4. Click Edit.

  5. To register while installing automatically, select Run Product Registration.

  6. Set the URL of the SMT Server and, optionally, the location of the SMT Certificate. The possible values are the same as for the kernel parameter regurl. The possible values are the same as for the kernel parameters regurl and regcert (see Section 13.1, “Using Kernel Parameters to Access an SMT Server”). The only exception is that the ask value for regcert does not work in AutoYaST, because it requires user interaction. If using it, the registration process will be skipped.

    If you go through the register process, YaST can use add-ons (extensions or modules) from a SUSE Customer Center registration server. With SUSE Customer Center you can register and install new products, for example the SUSE Software Development Kit, High Availability, GEO Clustering for SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension, and others directly available from your SUSE Customer Center. With SUSE Customer Center it is even possible to install the latest patch level.

  7. Perform all other configuration needed for the systems to be deployed.

  8. Select File › Save As and enter a file name for the profile, such as autoinst.xml.

13.3 Configuring Clients Using the clientSetup4SMT.sh Script

The /usr/share/doc/packages/smt/clientSetup4SMT.sh script is provided with SMT. This script allows to configure a client machine to use a SMT server or to reconfigure it to use a different SMT server.

To configure a client machine to use SMT with the clientSetup4SMT.sh script, follow these steps:

  1. Copy the /usr/share/doc/packages/smt/clientSetup4SMT.sh script from your SMT server to the client machine.

  2. As root, execute the script on the client machine. The script can be executed in two ways:

    • The script name is followed by the registration URL: 

      ./clientSetup4SMT.sh registration_URL

      for example: 

      ./clientSetup4SMT.sh  https://smt.example.com/center/regsvc

    • The script name is followed by the --host option followed by host name of the SMT server: 

      ./clientSetup4SMT.sh  --host server_hostname

      for example: 

      ./clientSetup4SMT.sh --host  smt.example.com

    The script downloads the server's CA certificate.

    Important
    Important: The --host Parameter

    The host name that needs to be provided with the --host parameter, needs to be the same name the certificate is issued for. Furthermore, if the name in the certificate is the fully qualified host name (for example, add smt.example.com), it needs to be entered as such—entering the “short” name (smt) will cause the clientSetup4SMT.sh script to fail.

  3. Accept the server's CA certificate by pressing y.

  4. The script performs all necessary modifications on the client. If wanted, the registration itself can be performed by the script.

  5. Perform a registration by executing SUSEConnect on the client.

13.4 Registering Clients Against an SMT Test Environment

To configure a client to register against the test environment instead of the production environment, use SUSEConnect on the client machine: 

SUSEConnect -r REG_CODE

Replace REG_CODE with your product's registration code. You can find it at the http://scc.suse.com site.

For more information about using SMT with a test environment, refer to the Subscription Management Tool Guide.

→Part II Imaging and Creating Products←Chapter 12 Advanced Disk Setup
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