Chapter 5. Subscription Management
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9, users are able to migrate from RHN Classic to Red Hat Subscription Asset Manager (SAM). SAM acts as a proxy for handling subscription information and software updates on client machines. For more information on the migration process, refer to the Subscription Management Guide.
Support for the selection of a remote server during the registration of a system is now supported in Subscription Manager. The Subscription Manager user interface provides an option to choose a URL of a server to register against, together with a port and a prefix, during the registration process. Additionally, when registering on the command line, the --serverurl can be used to specify the server to register against. For more information about this feature, refer to the Subscription Management Guide.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9, during firstboot system registration, registering to Red Hat Subscription Management is now the default option.
gpgcheck Behavior
Subscription Manager now disables gpgcheck for any repositories it manages which have an empty gpgkey. To re-enable the repository, upload the GPG keys, and ensure that the correct URL is added to your custom content definition.
System profiles are now unregistered when they are deleted from the Customer Portal so that they no longer check in with certificate-based RHN.
Subscription manager now allows users to associate a machine with a preferred Service Level which impacts the auto-subscription and healing logic. For more information on service levels, refer to the Subscription Management Guide.
Subscription manager now allows a user to select a specific release (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8), which will lock a machine to that release. Prior to this update, there was no way to limit package updates in the event newer packages became available as part of a later minor release (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9).
The Subscription Manager graphical user interface has been enhanced with various changes based on customer feedback.
