Subscription Management | Deployment Guide | SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Documentation › Deployment Guide › Manual Deployment › Subscription Management

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 YaST
13.4 More Information

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. 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. 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: 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: 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:

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.
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.
Select Support › SUSE Customer Center Configuration. An overview of the current configuration is shown.
Click Edit.
To register while installing automatically, select Run Product Registration.
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.
Perform all other configuration needed for the systems to be deployed.
Select File › Save As and enter a file name for the profile, such as autoinst.xml.

13.3 Configuring Clients Using YaST #

To configure a client to perform the registration against an SMT server use the YaST SUSE Customer Center Configuration module (yast2 scc).

On the client, the credentials are not necessary and you may leave the relevant fields empty. Click Local Registration Server and enter its url. Then click Next until the exit from the module.

13.4 More Information #

For more information about using SMT, refer to the Subscription Management Tool Guide.

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