Package Management

Clients use packages to install, uninstall, and upgrade software.

When packages are installed or upgraded, licenses or EULAs are automatically accepted.

To manage packages on a client, navigate to Systems, click the client to manage, and navigate to the Systems  Software  Packages subtab. The options available in this section vary depending on the type of client you have selected, and its current channel subscriptions.

Most package management actions can be added to action chains. For more about action chains, see Action Chains.

1. Compare Packages Using Profiles

You can compare the packages installed on a client with a stored profile, or with packages installed on another client. When the comparison is made, you can choose to modify the selected client to match.

To compare packages against a profile, you need to have stored a profile. Profiles are created from the packages on a currently installed client. When the profile has been created, you can use it to install more clients with the same packages installed.

Procedure: Creating a Stored Profile

  1. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Systems, click the client to base your profile off, and navigate to the Systems  Software  Packages  Profiles subtab.

  2. Click Create System Profile.

  3. Type a name and description for your profile and click Create Profile.

Procedure: Comparing Client Packages

  1. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Systems, click the client to compare, and navigate to the Systems  Software  Packages  Profiles subtab. To compare with a stored profile, select the profile and click Compare.

  2. To compare with another client, select the client name and click Compare to see a list of differences between the two clients.

2. Orphaned Packages

Orphaned packages are packages synchronized by SUSE Manager that are not associated with a software channel. Therefore, orphaned packages are usually not available to SUSE Manager clients and users cannot install such packages without additional effort.

A package can become orphaned as a result of one of the following events:

  • A synchronized repository removes a package. By default, SUSE Manager 5.0 unlinks such package from the channel, but does not remove the package. In SUSE Manager 4.3, you can enable this behavior by using the strict mode channel configuration.

  • A repository supersedes a package with a newer version and thus removes the previous version.

  • The reposync process got interrupted (for example, because of an out of space exception) and thus downloaded packages were not associated with a channel.

  • Users manually uploaded packages, but did not associate them with any channel.

Orphaned packages cost space in user environment and cannot be easily distributed to clients because they are not associated with a channel. Orphaned package can make sense with specific workflows like bootstrapping or customer-specific procedures.

You can view orphaned packages in the Web UI by clicking Software  Manage  Packages  view Packages in no channel

SUSE Manager periodically runs a taskomatic job that searches for orphaned packages and modifies the package organization ID to 1. This means that you can delete orphaned packages only after the taskomatic job execution. If you encounter an orphaned package that you cannot delete, wait 24 hours and try the deletion again.

Delete orphaned packages:

  • with command line tools targeting individual packages. For example:

    spacecmd package_remove zypper-1.14.52-150400.1.9.x86_64

  • with command line tools targeting all orphaned packages at once:

    spacecmd package_removeorphans