5 Registering Clients

Releases prior to SUSE Manager 2.1 were shipped with a traditional client management framework (which is still fully supported today). SUSE Manager 3 and later include the Salt framework in addition to the traditional framework.

The following procedure will guide you through creating the activation keys for your test channels. Activation keys can be used with both Salt and traditional clients.

Activation keys define the number of software entitlements, channels, and groups a client system is allowed to subscribe to. This information is passed on to all systems registered with said key. Each activation key is bound to the organization for which it has been created.

In this section you will create a tools repository on the SUSE Manager Server for providing client tools. The client tools repository contains packages for installing Salt on minions as well as required packages for registering traditional clients during the bootstrapping procedure. These packages will be installed from the newly generated repository during the registration process. In the following procedure you will create the SUSE Linux Enterprise tools repository.

Important: Creating a Tools Repository when an SCC Channel has not been Synced

Before following the procedure to create the tools repository make sure the SUSE vendor channel you will be using with your client has been completely synced. You can check this by running tail -f /var/log/rhn/reposync/<CHANNEL_NAME>.log as root. In the following example replace version with the actual version string:

# tail -f /var/log/rhn/reposync/sles`version`-pool-x86_64.log

Once completed you should see the following output in your terminal:

2017/12/12 15:20:32 +02:00 Importing packages started.
2017/12/12 15:22:02 +02:00 1.07 %
...
2017/12/12 15:34:25 +02:00 86.01 %
2017/12/12 15:35:49 +02:00 Importing packages finished.
2017/12/12 15:35:49 +02:00 Linking packages to channel.
...
2017/12/12 15:35:59 +02:00 Sync completed.

This repository is suitable for both Server and Desktop of SUSE Linux Enterprise .

There are currently three methods for registering Salt minions. The following section describes the first method and uses a bootstrap repository. The second method is to create a bootstrap script using mgr-bootstrap. Bootstrapping Salt minions with mgr-bootstrap is performed in the same manner as bootstrapping traditional clients; for more information, see Section 5.4, “Registering Traditional Clients”. The third method is performed from the SUSE Manager{webui} ; find this method located in Section 7.6, “Bootstrapping [Salt]”.

Important: Deprecation Warning

The mgr-bootstrap --salt option will be deprecated as of SUSE Manager 3.1. To bootstrap a Salt minion call mgr-bootstrap from the command line as you would for a traditional system.

The following section assumes you have created a SUSE Manager tools repository. You can review creating a tools repository in Section 5.3, “Creating the SUSE Manager Tools Repository”.

Warning: Ensure the Salt Master is Reachable During Bootstrap

The Salt master and its proxy should always be reachable via both IP address and the FQDN. In the following rare scenario:

• The Salt master (SUSE Manager) is in some DNS.

• Your Minions are in a different subnet bound to an alternate DNS and the Salt master record is absent.

• The Salt master cannot know that the minion is not utilizing the same DNS record. The the Salt master nevertheless sends the FQDN of itself to the minion expecting it to join.

• The minion looks for a different DNS, one where the master record does not exist therefore bootstrap fails.

Once you have fully synced a base channel from the Web UI for clients to obtain software sources from, for example: SLES12-SP3-Pool_for_x86_64 perform the following procedure to register a Salt minion.