Chapter 15. System and Subscription Management
PowerTOP now respects user-defined report file names
Previously, PowerTOP report file names were generated in an unclear, undocumented way. With this update, the implementation has been improved, and the generated file names now respect the names requested by the user. This applies to both CSV and HTML reports.
Amended yum-config-manager commands
Previously, running the
yum-config-manager --disable command disabled all configured repositories, while the yum-config-manager --enable command did not enable any. This inconsistency has been fixed. The --disable and --enable commands now require the use of '\*' in the syntax, and yum-config-manager --enable \* enables repositories. Running the commands without the addition of '\*' prints a message asking the user to run yum-config-manager --disable \* or yum-config-manager --enable \* if they want to disable or enable repositories.
New search-disabled-repos plug-in for yum
The search-disabled-repos plug-in for yum has been added to the subscription-manager packages. This plug-in allows users to successfully complete yum operations that fail due to the source repository being dependent on a disabled repository. When search-disabled-repos is installed in the described scenario, yum displays instructions to temporarily enable repositories that are currently disabled and to search for missing dependencies.
If you choose to follow the instructions and turn off the default notify_only behavior in the /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/search-disabled-repos.conf file, future yum operations will prompt you to temporarily or permanently enable all the disabled repositories needed to fulfill the yum transaction.
Acquiring hypervisor data in parallel
With this update, virt-who is able to acquire data from multiple hypervisors in parallel. Previously, virt-who could read data only from a single hypervisor at a time, and if one hypervisor in a series was nonfunctional, virt-who waited for its response and thus failed. Reading parallel hypervisors works around this problem and prevents the described failure.
Filtering for hypervisors reported by virt-who
The virt-who service introduces a filtering mechanism for the Subscription Manager reports. As a result, users can now choose which hosts virt-who should display according to the specified parameters. For example, they can filter out hosts that do not run any Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests, or hosts that run guests of a specified version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Improved visualization of host-to-guest association
The
-p option has been added to the virt-who utility. When used with -p, virt-who output displays Javascript Object Notation (JSON)-encoded map of the host-guest association. In addition, the information on host-guest association logged in the /var/log/rhsm/rhsm.log file is now formatted in JSON as well.
virt-who output displayed as host names
It is now possible to configure the virt-who query so that its results are displayed as host names instead of as Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) when viewed in Red Hat Satellite and Red Hat Customer Portal. To enable the function, add the
hypervisor_id=hostname option to the configuration file in the /etc/virt-who.d/ directory. Ideally, this should be done before using virt-who for the first time, otherwise changing the configuration duplicates the hypervisor.
Pre-filled virt-who configuration file
A default configuration file for virt-who has been placed in the /etc/virt-who.d/ directory. It contains a template and instructions for the user to configure virt-who. This replaces the deprecated configuration that uses the /etc/sysconfig/virt-who file.
Enhanced proxy connection options
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, the virt-who utility can handle the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables, and thus correctly uses the proxy server when requested. This allows virt-who to connect to the Hyper-V hypervisor and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager through proxy.
Subscription Manager now supports syslog
The subscription-manager tool can now use the syslog as the log handler and formatter in addition to separate log used previously. The handler and formatter is configured in the
/etc/rhsm/logging.conf configuration file.
Subscription Manager is now part of Initial Setup
The Subscription Manager component of Firstboot has been ported to the Initial Setup utility. Users are now able to register the system from the main menu of Initial Setup after installing a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 system and rebooting for the first time.
Subscription Manager now displays the server URL when registering on a command line
When registering a system using the
subscription-manager command on a command line, the tool now also shows the URL of the server being used for the registration when asking for user name and password. This helps the user determine which credentials to use.
Manage Repositories dialog in Subscription Manager is now more responsive
The Manage Repositories dialog in the graphical version of Subscription Manager (the subscription-manager-gui package) has been updated to no longer fetch information on each checkbox change. Instead, the system state is only synchronized when the new
save button is clicked. This removes delays users experienced in previous versions caused by the system state being updated on each checkbox action, and repository management is now significantly more responsive.
ReaR now works also on interfaces other than eth0
Previously, the rescue system produced by ReaR did not support mounting an NFS server using an interface other than eth0. In that case, the rescue system and backup files could not be downloaded and the system could not be restored. With this update, this has been fixed, and other interfaces, such as eth1, eth2, and so on, can now be used.
