Red Hat Satellite 5.6 to 5.7 Cheat Sheet

References:

• Red Hat Satellite 5.7 - Installation Guide
• Satellite 5.7.0 Installer for RHEL-6 ISO (RHN account required)
• Red Hat Satellite 5 Integrity Checker

Procedure

1. Commence the download of the installation ISO for Red Hat Satellite 5.7 Installer from the Red Hat Customer Portal, Downloads section.
2. Create the new Red Hat Satellite 5.7 Certificate and attach the required subscriptions. It may take some time for the certificate to become available so it is good to start this early on. Don’t forget to include a Satellite entitlement otherwise the “Download Certificate” button will never activate. You may have to wait awhile and refresh the page but mostly I find it works within a few minutes.
3. Backup your database. Note that PostgreSQL (postmaster) takes awhile to shutdown:
   

   rhn-satellite stop
   mkdir /var/satellite/Backups/20150219-2211.dump
   db-control backup /var/satellite/Backups/20150219-2211.dump
   

4. Consider using spacewalk-data-fsck to help clean-up the Red Hat Satellite database before you start. This takes a long while!
   

   spacewalk-data-fsck -v -r
   

5. Ensure you Red Hat Satellite 5.6 server is up-to-date:
   

   yum update
   

   Depending on what packages get updated you may want to reboot and stop Red Hat Satellite to get back to the same state:
   

    init 6
    rhn-satellite stop
   

6. Check the database schema version and the installed schema package are the same. Otherwise you may have to update the database schema:
   

   service postgresql start
   rhn-schema-version
   rpm -q --qf '%{version}-%{release}\n' satellite-schema
   

   If the versions are different then update the schema:
   

   spacewalk-schema-upgrade
   

7. Install the software that will perform the upgrade to Red Hat Satellite 5.7. It is in the Red Hat Satellite 5.6 software channel redhat-rhn-satellite-5.6-server-x86_64-6:
   

   yum install rhn-upgrade
   

8. Ensure there is more free space on the file system that will house /opt/rh/postgresql92/root/var/lib/pgsql/data than is presently consumed at /var/lib/pgsql. A minimum of 12GB is required:
   

       du -hs /var/lib/pgsql/
   

   Consider deleting the satsync directory contents if you require additional free space for the upgrade to occur.
   Important – /opt/rh/postgresql92/root/var/lib/pgsql/data
   

   Due to an updated version of the PostgreSQL Embedded Database, the database location has changed from /var/lib/pgsql/data in Red Hat Satellite 5.6 to /opt/rh/postgresql92/root/var/lib/pgsql/data in Red Hat Satellite 5.7. Make sure to allocate enough hard disk space to this location.

   rm -rf /var/cache/rhn/satsync/*
   

9. Transfer the ISO for Red Hat Satellite 5.7 Installer to the Red Hat Satellite server.
10. Transfer the Red Hat Satellite 5.7 certificate from RHN to the server.
11. Mount the ISO for Red Hat Satellite 5.7 Installer:
    

    mount -o ro,loop /root/satellite-5.7.0-20150108-rhel-6-x86_64.iso /mnt
    

12. Run the installer with the upgrade switch:
    Important
    

    Use additional options if your Red Hat Satellite is disconnected or using a Managed Database or External Database.

    cd /mnt
    ./install.pl --upgrade
    

    Accept the offer to resolve the dependencies.
    “Installing RHN packages” appears to take a really long time (many many minutes). Going to bed now :-p
    Yes it does take a long time and then “Setting up SELinux…” takes a while longer!
13. Upgrade the database schema:
    

    spacewalk-schema-upgrade
    

    Check the database schema version and the installed schema package are the same. Otherwise you may have to update the database schema:
    

    rhn-schema-version
    rpm -q --qf '%{version}-%{release}\n' satellite-schema
    

14. Activate the Red Hat Satellite.
    If using a connected Satellite:
    

    rhn-satellite-activate --rhn-cert [PATH-TO-NEW-CERT] --ignore-version-mismatch
    

    If disconnected, run:
    

    rhn-satellite-activate --rhn-cert [PATH-TO-NEW-CERT] --disconnected --ignore-version-mismatch
    

15. Rebuild search indexes with the following command:
    

    service rhn-search cleanindex
    

16. The upgrade process saves a backup of rhn.conf and other configuration files to /etc/sysconfig/rhn/backup-$DATE-$TIME. Refer to the backup copy of the rhn.conf file and ensure any previous custom values are set in the new Red Hat Satellite’s /etc/rhn/rhn.conf file. For example:
    

    debug = 3
    pam_auth_service = rhn-satellite
    

17. Restart all Red Hat Satellite services:
    

    /usr/sbin/rhn-satellite restart
    

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