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Chapter 1. Installing Red Hat Edge Manager on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Install Red Hat Edge Manager on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to manage edge devices and applications at scale.

To get started using Red Hat Edge Manager on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you must first:

Prepare your Red Hat Enterprise Linux host for the installation of the Red Hat Edge Manager by enabling the necessary repositories, installing the flightctl-services package, and then starting and verifying the running services.

Prerequisites

  • An active Red Hat Edge Manager subscription enabled for your Red Hat account

  • A Red Hat Enterprise Linux host with:

    • Minimal installation
    • 4 cores and 16GB RAM (recommended)
    • Administrative access (root or sudo-capable user)
    • SSH access
    • Podman installed for managing containers
  • A DNS name that resolves to the Red Hat Edge Manager host’s IP address

Procedure

  1. SSH into your Red Hat Enterprise Linux host.

  2. Authenticate and log in to the Red Hat Container Registry: 

    sudo podman login registry.redhat.io

  3. Install the necessary repositories and packages:

    • Ensure that the Red Hat Edge Manager repositories are enabled by running the following example command based on the version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and architecture of your host: 

      sudo subscription-manager repos --enable edge-manager-1.0-for-rhel-9-x86_64-rpms

    • Install the Red Hat Edge Manager service by running: 

      sudo dnf install -y flightctl-services

  4. Enable and start the services:

    Warning

    This command may take a few minutes to fully initialize all background services. 

    sudo systemctl enable --now flightctl.target

  5. Execute the following command to verify the status of the required services: 

    sudo systemctl list-units flightctl-*.service

Ensure that all listed services show a status of active.

Note

Some services are one-time initialization tasks (such as flightctl-db-migrate.service) and will correctly display a status of active (exited). Persistent background services will display as active (running).

Troubleshooting

If your services do not run correctly, use the following log command to troubleshoot further and remediate: 

sudo journalctl -u <impacted service> -b --no-pager

Once the operational status of the Flight Control services has been verified, the management server is ready to process requests.

You may now access the Web UI at https://<DNS_Name>; however, you must first configure valid authentication credentials to gain entry to the dashboard.

1.1.1. Configure authentication credentials
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By default, Red Hat Edge Manager on Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the PAM Issuer to provide OIDC-compliant authentication backed by local system credentials.

Procedure

  1. Create the flightctl-admin role group for global administrators: 

    sudo podman exec flightctl-pam-issuer groupadd flightctl-admin

  2. On your Red Hat Enterprise Linux host, generate an encrypted password hash for the new account. Do not enter a plaintext password in a podman exec command or in shell history. Run mkpasswd so the password is read interactively: 

    mkpasswd -m sha-512

    If mkpasswd is not installed, install the whois package (dnf install whois) or generate a SHA-512 crypt hash with openssl passwd -6.

  3. Create the user with a home directory, add the user to the group flightctl-admin, and apply the hash as the account password. Enclose the hash in single quotes so the shell does not expand $ characters in the hash. 

    sudo podman exec flightctl-pam-issuer useradd \
  -m \
  --groups flightctl-admin \
  -p '<PASSWORD_HASH>' \
  <USER>

1.1.2. Installing the Flight Control CLI
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You can install the Flight Control CLI via the RPM package or by downloading the binary from the UI.

To install the Flight Control CLI using the RPM, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. Install the flightctl CLI with your package manager by running the following command: 

    sudo dnf install -y flightctl-cli

  2. Verify that the flightctl CLI is working correctly by running the following command: 

    flightctl version
    Note

    The output displays the Client Version. The Server Version is only available after you authenticate. Use the flightctl login command to log into the CLI for the first time to enable server version access.

  3. Run the following command to initiate the authentication process for the web UI.

    Note

    If you are using self-signed certificates, you will be prompted to allow an insecure connection. 

    flightctl login https://<DNS_Name>:3443 --username <user_name> --password <password>

The CLI is now successfully authenticated and configured to communicate with the Flight Control API. It establishes a secure link between your local environment and the management server, allowing you to issue subsequent commands to manage your fleets and devices.

To install the Flight Control CLI binary from the UI, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the UI at https://<DNS_Name>/ and log in using the credentials you created in the Configure authentication credentials section.
  2. Click the ❔ (question mark) icon in the upper part of the Red Hat Edge Manager UI.

  3. Select and click the downloadable archive file based on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux processor architecture.

    The <flightctl-os-arch>.tar.gz file is downloaded to your default download location.

  4. Extract the flightctl binary file from the downloaded archive. 

    $ tar -xvf <flightctl-os-arch>.tar.gz

  5. Copy the flightctl binary into a directory in your execution path as root, then set execute permission on the installed file. In the following example, the /usr/local/bin directory is on the path for users on the system: 

    $ sudo cp flightctl /usr/local/bin/
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/flightctl

  6. Verify that the flightctl is working correctly by running the following command: 

    flightctl version
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