Registering Raspberry Pi OS Clients

This section contains information about registering clients running Raspberry Pi OS operating systems.

Bootstrapping can be used with Raspberry Pi OS clients for performing initial state runs, and for profile updates.

  • Raspberry Pi OS repository URLs are available from SUSE Customer Center

  • Packages and metadata are provided by Raspberry Pi OS, not by SUSE

  • For supported products, see the support table and the release notes

1. Prepare to Register

Some preparation is required before you can register Raspberry Pi OS clients to the SUSE Manager Server:

  • Ensure DNS is correctly configured and provides an entry for the client. Alternatively, you can configure the /etc/hosts files on both the SUSE Manager Server and the client with the appropriate entries.

  • The client must have the date and time synchronized with the SUSE Manager Server before registration.

2. Add Software Channels

Before you register Raspberry Pi OS clients to your SUSE Manager Server, you need to add the required software channels, and synchronize them.

The architectures currently supported are: arm64 and armhf. For full list of supported products and architectures, see Supported Clients and Features.

3. Check Synchronization Status

Procedure: Checking Synchronization Progress from the Web UI

  1. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Admin  Setup Wizard and select the Products tab. This dialog displays a completion bar for each product when they are being synchronized.

  2. Alternatively, you can navigate to Software  Manage  Channels, then click the channel associated to the repository. Navigate to the Repositories tab, then click Sync and check Sync Status.

Procedure: Checking Synchronization Progress from the Command Prompt

  1. At the command prompt on the SUSE Manager Server, as root, use the tail command to check the synchronization log file:

    tail -f /var/log/rhn/reposync/<channel-label>.log

  2. Each child channel generates its own log during the synchronization progress. You need to check all the base and child channel log files to be sure that the synchronization is complete.

Raspberry Pi OS channels can be very large. Synchronization can sometimes take several hours.

4. Create an Activation Key

You need to create an activation key that is associated with your Raspberry Pi OS channels.

For more information on activation keys, see Activation Keys.

5. Manage GPG Keys

Clients use GPG keys to check the authenticity of software packages before they are installed. Only trusted software can be installed on clients.

Trusting a GPG key is important for security on clients. It is the task of the administrator to decide which keys are needed and can be trusted. Because a software channel cannot be used when the GPG key is not trusted, the decision of assigning a channel to a client depends on the decision of trusting the key.

For more information about GPG keys, see GPG Keys.

Raspberry Pi OS clients can require multiple GPG keys to be installed.

When synchronizing third-party Raspberry Pi OS repositories, you will need to import the appropriate GPG key on the server. If the GPG key is missing, synchronization will fail.

For Raspberry Pi OS repositories, only the metadata is signed. Therefore importing a GPG key for the software channel is not needed. Packages will not be re-signed by SUSE Manager.

To see which GPG keys are already imported to SUSE Manager Server, run the following command:

mgrctl exec -- gpg --homedir /var/lib/spacewalk/gpgdir --list-keys

To import a new GPG key, run the following command:

mgradm gpg add <filename>.gpg

6. Root Access

The root user on Raspberry Pi OS is disabled by default for SSH access.

To be able to onboard using a regular user, you need to edit the sudoers file.

Procedure: Granting Root User Access

  1. On the client, edit the sudoers file:

    sudo visudo

    Grant sudo access to the user by adding this line at the end of the sudoers file. Replace <user> with the name of the user that is bootstrapping the client in the Web UI:

    <user>  ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/python, /usr/bin/python2, /usr/bin/python3, /var/tmp/venv-salt-minion/bin/python

This procedure grants root access without requiring a password, which is required for registering the client. When the client is successfully installed it runs with root privileges, so the access is no longer required. We recommend that you remove the line from the sudoers file after the client has been successfully installed.

7. Register Clients

To register your clients, you need a bootstrap repository. By default, bootstrap repositories are automatically created, and regenerated daily for all synchronized products. You can manually create the bootstrap repository from the command prompt, using this command:

mgr-create-bootstrap-repo

For more information on registering your clients, see Client Registration.