Registering Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 Clients
This section contains information about registering Salt clients running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS operating systems.
SUSE Manager supports Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, and 20.04 LTS clients using Salt. For information about registering Salt clients running Ubuntu 20.04, see Registering Ubuntu 20.04 Clients.
Canonical does not endorse or support SUSE Manager. |
Ubuntu is supported for Salt clients only. Traditional clients are not supported. |
Bootstrapping is supported for starting Ubuntu clients and performing initial state runs such as setting repositories and performing profile updates.
However, the root user on Ubuntu is disabled by default, so to use bootstrapping, you require an existing user with sudo
privileges for Python.
1. Add Software Channels
Before you register Ubuntu clients to your SUSE Manager Server, you need to add the required software channels, and synchronize them.
The products you need for this procedure are:
OS Version | Product Name |
---|---|
Ubuntu 16.04 |
Ubuntu 16.04 |
Ubuntu 18.04 |
Ubuntu 18.04 |
When using WebUI to add Ubuntu 18.04 channels, you also need to add ubuntu-1804-amd64-main and ubuntu-1804-amd64-main-updates channels using CLI, as described in Ubuntu Channels - CLI. |
Ubuntu 16.04 is now at end-of-life, and the ISO images provided in the repository are out of date. Bootstrapping new Ubuntu 16.04 clients using these packages will fail. If you need to bootstrap new Ubuntu 16.04 clients, follow the troubleshooting procedure in Troubleshooting Clients. |
-
In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to
. -
Locate the appropriate products for your client operating system and architecture using the search bar, and check the appropriate product. This will automatically check all mandatory channels. Also all recommended channels are checked as long as the
include recommended
toggle is turned on. Click the arrow to see the complete list of related products, and ensure that any extra products you require are checked. -
Click Add Products and wait until the products have finished synchronizing.
Alternatively, you can add channels at the command prompt. The channels you need for this procedure are:
OS Version | Base Channel |
---|---|
Ubuntu 16.04 |
ubuntu-16.04-pool-amd64 |
Ubuntu 18.04 |
ubuntu-18.04-pool-amd64 |
Ubuntu 16.04 is now at end-of-life, and the ISO images provided in the repository are out of date. Bootstrapping new Ubuntu 16.04 clients using these packages will fail. If you need to bootstrap new Ubuntu 16.04 clients, follow the troubleshooting procedure in Troubleshooting Clients. |
Ubuntu 16.04 is now at end-of-life, and the ISO images provided in the repository are out of date. Bootstrapping new Ubuntu 16.04 clients using these packages will fail. If you need to bootstrap new Ubuntu 16.04 clients, follow the troubleshooting procedure in Troubleshooting Clients. |
-
At the command prompt on the SUSE Manager Server, as root, use the
spacewalk-common-channels
command to add the appropriate channels:spacewalk-common-channels \ <base_channel_label> <child_channel_label_1> \ <child_channel_label_2> \ ... <child_channel_label_n>
-
Synchronize the channels:
spacewalk-repo-sync -p <base_channel_label>
-
Ensure the synchronization is complete before continuing.
OS Version | Main Channel | Security Channel | Updates Channel |
---|---|---|---|
Ubuntu 16.04 |
ubuntu-1604-amd64-main |
ubuntu-1604-amd64-security |
ubuntu-1604-amd64-updates |
Ubuntu 18.04 |
ubuntu-1804-amd64-main |
ubuntu-1804-amd64-main-security |
ubuntu-1804-amd64-main-updates |
Channels added using this method do not synchronize regularly by default. You can configure a synchronization schedule using the SUSE Manager Web UI. Navigate to
, click the channel you added, and select the subtab. Set a daily or weekly synchronization schedule, and click Schedule.
The client tools channel provided by |
2. Check Synchronization Status
-
In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to
and select theProducts
tab. This dialog displays a completion bar for each product when they are being synchronized. -
Alternatively, you can navigate to
, then click the channel associated to the repository. Navigate to theRepositories
tab, then clickSync
and checkSync Status
.
-
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
-
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.
Ubuntu channels can be very large. Synchronization can sometimes take several hours. |
3. Root Access
The root user on Ubuntu is disabled by default for SSH access.
To be able to onboard using a regular user, you need to edit the sudoers
file.
This issue happens with self-installed versions of Ubuntu.
If the default user has been granted administrative privileges during installation time, a password is requiered to perform privilege escalation using |
-
On the client, edit the
sudoers
file:sudo visudo
Grant
sudo
access to the user by adding this line at the end of thesudoers
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 |
4. Register Clients
To register your Ubuntu 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 Overview.
5. Troubleshooting: Install spacecmd
Ubuntu 18.04 Clients
With default configuration settings, the installation of spacecmd
may fail with:
The following packages have unmet dependencies: spacecmd : Depends: python3-rpm but it is not installable
python3-rpm
is part of the Ubuntu universe repositories.
To make this package available, enable universe repositories on the client.
-
On the Ubuntu 18.04 client, open the
/etc/apt/sources.list
file, and uncomment the universe repositories. -
Execute the command
apt-get update
.
Now spacecmd
is installable.