Applies to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4

3 Migrate from SMT to RMT #

This chapter describes the migration from SMT on SLES 11 or 12 to RMT on SLES 15.

3.1 Important notes #

Warning: Read this section carefully

Carefully read this section. It contains vital information about the migration process.

Use a new host: We recommend that you install RMT on a newly-installed SLES 15 host. RMT is not a complete replacement for SMT. It has a different workflow than SMT and only supports registering SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 systems and newer.
Repository metadata and settings: The settings of staged repositories will not be exported from SMT. Repositories that have been marked to be mirrored will be exported.
Custom repositories: It is only possible to export repositories that are marked for mirroring.
Expired subscriptions: Products no longer available on the organization subscriptions will not be available on RMT.
Client information: Systems and their activated products will be exported. SMT client jobs and patch status will not be exported from SMT.

Table 3.1: Feature comparison #

Feature	SMT	RMT
Available on SLES 11	yes	no
Available on SLES 12	yes	no
Available on SLES 15	no	yes
Synchronize products with SUSE Customer Center	yes	yes
Mirror RPMs from repositories	yes	yes
Selective mirroring (specifying products to mirror)	yes	yes
Serve RPMs via HTTP	yes	yes
Registration of SLE 15 systems	yes	yes
Registration of SLE 12 systems	yes	yes
Registration of SLE 11 systems	yes	no
Red Hat 6 and earlier support	yes ¹	no
Red Hat 7+ support	yes ¹	yes ¹
Support for migrating SLE 12 to 15	yes ²	yes
Support for migrating SLE 15 SPx to 15 SPx+1	yes ²	yes
Staging repositories	yes	no ³
Offline mirroring	yes	yes
NTLM Proxy support	yes	yes
Custom repositories	yes	yes
YaST installation wizard	yes	yes
YaST management wizard	yes	no
Client management	yes	no
Files deduplication	yes	yes
Data transfer from SMT to RMT	n/a	yes
Transfer registration data to SUSE Customer Center	yes	yes
Reporting	yes	no
Custom TLS certificates for Web server	yes	yes
Clean up data from repositories that are not used any longer	yes	yes
Bash completion	no	yes
Available on openSUSE Leap 15	no	yes ⁴
Easy development setup + contribution guide	no	yes
100% test coverage	no	yes
Plugin functionality	no	yes
Web server	Apache2	Nginx
Platform	Perl	Ruby
Clean up data from repositories that are no longer used	yes	yes
Bash completion	no	yes
Option to deploy on Kubernetes	no	yes ⁵

Support via SUSE Liberty Linux, find more details in https://www.suse.com/products/suse-liberty-linux/.
SMT only partially supports migrating systems to SLE 15. SLE 15 is composed of multiple modules and extensions. Some modules are not required, as they provide additional functionality. RMT fully supports migrations into and within SLE 15, therefore it only adds the minimum of required modules. SMT does not fully support these migrations, and it enables all available modules on the system.
Functionality is offered by SUSE Manager.
Only available with self-support.
Find more details in Section 2.4, “Deploying RMT on top of the Kubernetes cluster”.

3.2 Exporting SMT data #

Procedure 3.1: Export SMT data #

Update your SMT server installation by running zypper up.
If you want to export your SSL certificates along with the rest of the data, run smt-data-export. Remember to keep your certificates in a safe place.
If you do not want to export the SSL certificates from SMT, run smt-data-export --no-ssl-export.
The exported configuration is now saved to smt-data-export.TIMESTAMP.tar.gz. Copy the file to a location that can be accessed by the new RMT server.

3.3 Importing SMT data to RMT #

To make sure your RMT installation is up to date, run zypper up.

Copy the exported .tar.gz file to an empty directory and unpack it. Then enter the new directory:

> mkdir EMPTY_DIR
> cd EMPTY_DIR
> tar xf /PATH/TO/smt-data-export.TIMESTAMP.tar.gz
> cd smt-data-export

If you chose to export the SSL certificates from SMT, copy the CA private key and certificate to /etc/rmt/ssl/:
```
> sudo cp ssl/cacert.key /etc/rmt/ssl/rmt-ca.key
> sudo cp ssl/cacert.pem /etc/rmt/ssl/rmt-ca.crt
```
Run the YaST RMT configuration module as described in Section 2.5, “RMT configuration with YaST”. If you imported the SMT CA certificate, add the domain of the SMT server to the common names of the new SSL certificate.
Run the RMT synchronization to get the products and repositories data from SUSE Customer Center.
```
> sudo rmt-cli sync
```
Import the data from the SMT server.
```
> sudo rmt-data-import -d ./
```
Optional: If the URL of the RMT server changed, change the URL parameter of clients in /etc/SUSEConnect to point to the new RMT server. Alternatively, change the DNS records to re-assign the host name to the RMT server.
Optional: Move the mirrored repository data from SMT to RMT, and adjust the ownership of the copied data.
```
> sudo cp -r /var/www/htdocs/repo/* /usr/share/rmt/public/repo/
> sudo chown -R _rmt:nginx /usr/share/rmt/public/repo
```
Tip
The path for storing custom repository data on the RMT server is different from that of SMT. With RMT, it replicates the directory structure of the source server's URL into a top level directory. For example, if the URL of the custom repository is
```
http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/leap/15.4/repo/oss
```
its path on the RMT server will be
```
/usr/share/rmt/public/repo/debug/distribution/leap/15.4/repo/oss
```
Custom repositories on the SMT server are disabled by default. If you want to mirror them to the RMT, enable them before mirroring.
1. Check for custom repositories by running:
```
> sudo rmt-cli repos custom list
```
  A table of all custom repositories will be shown. The first column contains the ID of each repository and the Mirror? column will show false.
2. Enable each custom repository you want to mirror by running:
```
> sudo rmt-cli repos custom enable ID
```
Update the packages in the repositories by starting the mirroring process:
```
> sudo rmt-cli mirror
```