Content Staging

Staging is used by clients to download packages in advance, before they are installed. This allows package installation to begin as soon as it is scheduled, which can reduce the amount of time required for a maintenance window.

1. Enable Content Staging

You can manage content staging across your entire organization. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Admin  Organizations to see a list of available organizations. Click the name of an organization, and check the Enable Staging Contents box to allow clients in this organization to stage package data.

You must be logged in as the SUSE Manager administrator to create and manage organizations.

You can also enable staging at the command prompt by editing /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date, and adding or editing these lines:

stagingContent=1
stagingContentWindow=24

The stagingContentWindow parameter is a time value expressed in hours and determines when downloading starts. It is the number of hours before the scheduled installation or update time. In this example, content is downloaded 24 hours before the installation time. The start time for download depends on the selected contact method for a system. The assigned contact method sets the time for when the next mgr_check is executed.

Next time an action is scheduled, packages are automatically downloaded, but not installed. At the scheduled time, the staged packages are installed.

2. Configure Content Staging

There are two parameters used to configure content staging:

  • salt_content_staging_advance is the advance time for the content staging window to open, in hours. This is the number of hours before installation starts, that package downloads can begin.

  • salt_content_staging_window is the duration of the content staging window, in hours. This is the amount of time clients have to stage packages before installation begins.

For example, if salt_content_staging_advance is set to six hours, and salt_content_staging_window is set to two hours, the staging window opens six hours before the installation time, and remain open for two hours. No packages are downloaded in the four remaining hours until installation starts.

If you set the same value for both salt_content_staging_advance and salt_content_staging_window packages are able to be downloaded until installation begins.

Configure the content staging parameters in /usr/share/rhn/config-defaults/rhn_java.conf.

Default values:

  • salt_content_staging_advance: 8 hours

  • salt_content_staging_window: 8 hours

Content staging must be enabled for these parameters to work correctly.