[Spacewalk-list] Question regarding SLES & RHEL clients registered to Spacewalk

[Schindler, Daniel (STEAG Energy Services GmbH)]

Hi,

but how would you actually synchronize package content from SCC (Suse Customer Center) into your Spacewalk software channels? Does spacewalk-repo-sync support SCC/NU?
I read something about "mgr-sync" but I guess it's only shipped with Suse Manager...

Regards,
Daniel

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com] Im Auftrag von Lichtinger, Bernhard
Gesendet: Dienstag, 16. Juni 2015 16:12
An: spacewalk-list at redhat.com
Betreff: Re: [Spacewalk-list] Question regarding SLES & RHEL clients registered to Spacewalk

Hi,


> 1. Does anyone currently use Spacewalk to manage SLES or RHEL servers in their environment. Have you encountered any issues where it invalidated your support?

On the technical side it works fine.
We had only one support case so far and using spacewalk was no issue or wasn't even looked at.

> 
> 2. According to SuSE/Novell Support they mentioned to me that Spacewalk is not a supported tool to download & manage packages, so essentially it would invalidate the support. This would be true even if i used SMT to download the package and push them into Spacewalk. On the other hand they would try to still provide support, but if in the case that we install 3rd party RPM's that is the cause of issue, they would not be able to support the system. Does anyone know what specific packages & dependencies would be installed or modified?

We use the spacewalk-client rpms from suse openbuild service (OBS), to have the same version as the spacewalk server: 
https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/systemsmanagement:spacewalk
No additional dependencies are needed.

> 
> 3. I only see steps to register OpenSuSE clients and not SLES on this page https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/RegisteringClientsAre there steps for SLES?

They are the same steps. But you have to use the appropriate repo from OBS: SLES11.3 or SLES12.0. Or you try the SLES-included packages. See below.

> 
> 4. Is there a way to register a SLES server to Spacewalk without getting packages from openSuSE?
> 
Yes, it is. Suse-Manager is based on spacewalk, so in SLES there are also client-packages included, but they have different names and older versions. E.g. in SLES11.3 you get version 1.7.

spacewalk-check (rhn_check)
spacewalk-client-setup (rhnreg_ks, spacewalk-channel) spacewalk-client-tools (up2date) spacewalksd (rhnsd) zypp-plugin-spacewalk

So most of the time instead of rhn Suse uses spacewalk in package names. 
I don't know if 1.7 client tools still work with an 2.3 spacewalk-server (last time I tested it with spacewalk-2.1), but I guess it will work.


Regards,
Bernhard