Red Hat SummitAssessing and remediating system issues using Red Hat Insights Tasks
Use predefined Insights Tasks playbooks to resolve issues on your systems
Abstract
Chapter 1. Overview of Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux tasks
Tasks is part of the Automation Toolkit for Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Tasks offer predefined playbooks that help you maintain the health of your infrastructure by simplifying and solving complex problems using automated tasks. Tasks solve specific problems and are typically executed one time on your systems to accomplish things such as, detecting a high-profile vulnerability on your systems or preparing systems for a major upgrade. You can find tasks in Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > Red Hat Insights > RHEL > Automation Toolkit > Tasks.
Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux anticipates your need to solve problems and get things done in your infrastructure, and continuously adds specific tasks to the Automation Toolkit. Tasks include the following:
- RHEL pre-upgrade analysis utility task
- Pre-conversion analysis utility task
- Convert to RHEL from CentOS Linux 7
Some important information you will need to get started with executing a task are:
- User Access settings in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. Find out what role or level of user access you need to complete tasks.
- Registering and connecting systems to Red Hat Insights to execute tasks. Using tasks requires you to register and connect systems to Insights.
- Executing Tasks using Red Hat Insights. Understand how to find and execute tasks.
System requirements to execute different tasks might vary.
1.1. User Access settings in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console
User Access is the Red Hat implementation of role-based access control (RBAC). Your Organization Administrator uses User Access to configure what users can see and do on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console (the console):
- Control user access by organizing roles instead of assigning permissions individually to users.
- Create groups that include roles and their corresponding permissions.
- Assign users to these groups, allowing them to inherit the permissions associated with their group’s roles.
1.1.1. Predefined User Access groups and roles
To make groups and roles easier to manage, Red Hat provides two predefined groups and a set of predefined roles.
1.1.1.1. Predefined groups
The Default access group contains all users in your organization. Many predefined roles are assigned to this group. It is automatically updated by Red Hat.
If the Organization Administrator makes changes to the Default access group its name changes to Custom default access group and it is no longer updated by Red Hat.
The Default admin access group contains only users who have Organization Administrator permissions. This group is automatically maintained and users and roles in this group cannot be changed.
On the Hybrid Cloud Console navigate to Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > the Settings icon (⚙) > Identity & Access Management > User Access > Groups to see the current groups in your account. This view is limited to the Organization Administrator.
1.1.1.2. Predefined roles assigned to groups
The Default access group contains many of the predefined roles. Because all users in your organization are members of the Default access group, they inherit all permissions assigned to that group.
The Default admin access group includes many (but not all) predefined roles that provide update and delete permissions. The roles in this group usually include administrator in their name.
On the Hybrid Cloud Console navigate to Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > the Settings icon (⚙) > Identity & Access Management > User Access > Roles to see the current roles in your account. You can see how many groups each role is assigned to. This view is limited to the Organization Administrator.
See User Access Configuration Guide for Role-based Access Control (RBAC) for additional information.
1.1.2. Access permissions
The Prerequisites for each procedure list which predefined role provides the permissions you must have. As a user, you can navigate to Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > the Settings icon (⚙) > My User Access to view the roles and application permissions currently inherited by you.
If you try to access Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux features and see a message that you do not have permission to perform this action, you must obtain additional permissions. The Organization Administrator or the User Access administrator for your organization configures those permissions.
Use the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console Virtual Assistant to ask "Contact my Organization Administrator". The assistant sends an email to the Organization Administrator on your behalf.
1.1.3. User Access roles for Insights Tasks users
The following role enables enhanced access to remediations features in Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux:
- Tasks administrator. The Tasks administrator role permits access to all Tasks capabilities to remotely execute Tasks on Insights-connected systems.
All members of the Default Admin Access group can also execute Tasks.
A Tasks viewer role does not exist.
Chapter 2. Configuring notifications and integrations for Insights tasks events
You can configure the notifications service on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to send notifications whenever the Red Hat Insights tasks service detects certain events that occur during the start and execution of a task. Using the notifications service can provide an alternative to having to continually check the tasks Activity tab for events related to a task’s status. You can find the notifications service settings at Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > Settings > Notifications.
When you begin to think about configuring events for which you want notifications for Insights tasks, it is important to understand the difference between an Insights task, an Insights task execution, and an Insights task job, and how they work to accomplish a specific task.
- Insights task: a predefined script or playbook that is designed to accomplish a specific task.
- Insights task execution: an instance of running that script or playbook on one or more systems.
- Insights task job: the execution of a specific task on a specific system.
For example, you can configure the notifications service to automatically send an email message when an Insights task starts, completes, or fails. As another example, you can configure the notifications service to automatically send an email message when an Insights task job starts or completes.
In addition to sending email messages, you can configure the notifications service to send event data in other ways:
- Using an authenticated client to query Red Hat Insights APIs for event data
- Using webhooks to send events to third-party applications that accept inbound requests
- Integrating notifications with applications such as Splunk to route tasks events to the application dashboard, or to your preferred messaging application such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Configuring the notifications service to inform members of your Red Hat account of tasks events requires three main steps:
- An Organization Administrator creates a User Access group with the Notifications administrator role, and then adds account members to the group.
- A Notifications administrator sets up behavior groups for events in the notifications service. Behavior groups specify the delivery method for each notification. The Notifications administrator selects the event types to make available for the specified group of users. For example, a behavior group can specify whether to send email notifications to all users, or just to Organization Administrators.
- Members on the account who want to receive email notifications about events must set their user preferences so that they receive individual emails for each event.
You must be a Notifications administrator to view configurable tasks events.
You can learn more about events and notifications by using resources in the following Additional Resources section.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- See Configuring notifications on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console for more information about how to set up notifications for tasks events.
Chapter 3. Registering and connecting systems to Red Hat Insights to execute tasks
To work with Red Hat Insights, you need to register systems to Insights, and enable system communication with Insights. In addition to communicating with Insights, you need to enable and install dependencies on Satellite 6.11+, Remote Host Configuration (rhc), rhc-worker-playbook and ansible, so that you can use task services, and other services in the Automation Toolkit.
For more information about enabling system communication with Insights, and addressing dependencies, see:
Additional resources
Chapter 4. Executing tasks using Red Hat Insights
You can execute tasks on remote systems in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console directly from Red Hat Insights Tasks.
Tasks you can execute are:
- RHEL pre-upgrade analysis utility tasks.
- Pre-conversion analysis utility tasks.
- Convert to RHEL from CentOS Linux 7.
Prerequisites and actions required to execute specific Insights tasks will vary.
Here are general instructions to execute a task.
Prerequisites
- You are logged in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.
- You are a member of a User Access group with the Tasks administrator role.
-
You have connected systems and addressed dependencies for Remote Host Configuration (rhc),
rhc-worker-playbookandansible-core, as needed. See Enabling host communication with Insights in the Red Hat Insights Remediations Guide. You have addressed dependencies for Satellite 6.11+. See Enabling host communication with Insights in the Red Hat Insights Remediations Guide.
Services in the Insights Automation Toolkit have similar dependency requirements that must be met before Red Hat Insights users can execute playbooks for remediations and tasks.
Procedure
- Navigate to Automation Toolkit > Tasks.
- Select a task to execute and click Run Task.
Optional: Edit the default task name to customize it for your needs.
NoteAfter you execute the task, you will not be able to change the task name again.
- Make note of any task-specific prerequisites shown in the brief description of the task.
Select the systems on which to execute the task. You can use filters to search and filter systems by:
- Name
- Operating System
Tag
Click Execute task. The task executes on the selected systems. You might see a pop-up that shows that your task is running.
Click View Progress to view the task details page which shows how the task is executing on each of your selected systems.
- Review Status and Message details.
- If shown, click the Show more icon beside the system name to find more information about messages.
- Click Tasks to go to the task detail view to see more information about how the task executed on the selected systems.
Click the Activity tab to see the status of all the task you have executed. Tasks are in chronological order, by the most recent date and time.
NoteA Completed status indicates that the task executed, but does not indicate that the task accomplished its goal.
- Optional: Click the task you executed to return to the task detail view to see more information about how the task executed on the selected systems.
Next Steps
You might need to resolve errors, such as an error that occurs because you need to install a software package on your systems before a task can successfully execute. After you resolve those errors, you can execute the task again on the same systems.
Optional: To execute a task again, click Run Task again. The previously selected systems are still selected, and you can also add additional systems, if needed.
Chapter 5. Using Insights tasks to help you convert from CentOS Linux 7 to RHEL 7
You can use Red Hat Insights to help you convert from CentOS Linux 7 to RHEL 7.
For more information about using Insights tasks to help convert your systems, see Converting using Insights in the Converting from a Linux distribution to RHEL using the Convert2RHEL utility documentation.
Additional resources
Troubleshooting conversion-related Insights tasks
Tasks help you update, manage, or secure your Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure using Insights. Each task is a predefined playbook that executes a task from start to finish. If you have trouble completing some Insights conversion-related tasks, see:
Chapter 6. Assessing system-upgrade readiness with the pre-upgrade analysis task
This task is a component of the in-place upgrade capability for Red Hat Enterprise Linux using the Leapp tool. For more information about the Leapp tool and using it to check upgrade readiness manually, see Upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9, Instructions for an in-place upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
The pre-upgrade analysis task checks the readiness of systems to upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 to RHEL 9. If Insights detects upgrade-blocking issues, you can see more information about the issues, including steps to resolve them, in Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console (Console).
The pre-upgrade analysis task can run on any RHEL 8 system that is connected to Red Hat Insights using the remote host configuration (rhc) solution. You can verify that your system is connected to Insights by locating it in the Insights system inventory on the Console. If the system is not in the inventory, see Remote Host Configuration and Management documentation for information about connecting systems to Insights.
You can also run the Leapp utility manually on systems. When an Insights-connected system has a Leapp report in its archive, whether the utility was run manually or as an Insights task, you can see results from the report in Insights.
6.1. Requirements and prerequisites
The following requirements and prerequisites apply to the pre-upgrade analysis task:
- This guide assumes that you have read and understood the in-place upgrade documentation before attempting to perform any upgrade-related action using Red Hat Insights.
- Your systems must be eligible for in-place upgrade. See in-place upgrade documentation for system requirements and limitations.
Your RHEL system must be connected to Red Hat Insights using the remote host configuration solution in order to execute Insights tasks and other remediation playbooks from the Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux UI.
- For more information, see Remote Host Configuration and Management documentation.
You are logged into the console.redhat.com with Tasks administrator privileges granted in User Access.
NoteAll members of the Default admin access group have Tasks administrator access. If you are not a member of a User Access group with this role, you will not see any tasks on the Tasks page. For more information about User Access, including how to request greater access to Insights features, see User Access Configuration Guide for Role-based Access Control (RBAC).
6.2. Running the pre-upgrade analysis task
Use the following procedure to analyze the readiness of RHEL systems for upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9.
Prerequisites
- Prerequisites are listed in the Requirements and prerequisites section of this chapter.
Procedure
- Go to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > Red Hat Insights > RHEL > Automation Toolkit > Tasks.
Locate the Pre-upgrade analysis for in-place upgrade from RHEL 8 task.
NoteIf you can not see any tasks on the page, you might not have adequate User Access. See User Access Configuration Guide for Role-based Access Control (RBAC) for more information.
- Optional: You can view details of the pre-upgrade analysis utility by clicking Download preview of playbook.
- Click Run task.
On the Pre-upgrade analysis for in-place upgrade from RHEL 8 popup, select systems on which to run the pre-upgrade analysis by checking the box next to each system.
NoteBy default, the list of systems is filtered to only display systems that are eligible to run the task. You can change or add filters to expand the parameters of included systems from your inventory.
- Click Execute task to run the task on the selected systems.
Verification
Use the following procedure to verify that a task has been executed successfully.
- Go to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > Red Hat Insights > RHEL > Automation Toolkit > Tasks page and click the Activity tab. The status of tasks, whether they are in progress or have been completed, can be viewed here.
Locate your task based on the run date and time. You can see whether the task completed or failed.
6.3. Reviewing the pre-upgrade analysis task report
After executing the pre-upgrade analysis task on systems, you can review specific details and upgrade-inhibiting recommendations for each system.
Prerequisites
- Prerequisites are listed in the Requirements and prerequisites section of this chapter.
Procedure
- Go to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console > Red Hat Insights > RHEL > Automation Toolkit > Tasks and click the Activity tab.
- Click on the task name to view the results of a task. Note the run date and time so that you select the correct report.
Click on the carat next to the system name to view a list of alerts for that system.
View information about upgrade-inhibiting alerts by clicking on the carat next to an alert with a white exclamation mark inside of a red dot, accompanying red alert text.
NoteIn addition to the inhibitor alerts, you might also see lower severity and informative alerts that do not require remediation in order for the upgrade to proceed.
Review the report thoroughly. While some recommendations may be informational, it is crucial to take action if you encounter any errors or warnings. In the event of such issues, address them on your systems and re-run the pre-upgrade task to assess the impact of your remediation efforts.
NoteCertain errors are classified as official inhibitors, and proceeding with the upgrade is not possible until these are remediated.
6.4. Viewing upgrade-inhibiting recommendations
After running the pre-upgrade analysis task, or manually running the Leapp tool on individual systems, you can view a list of recommendations for upgrade-inhibiting issues in your infrastructure.
Using the list of pre-upgrade recommendations, you can view the following information about each recommendation:
- Recommendation details
- Affected-system information
- Total risk and impact insights
- Risk to system availability during resolution actions
Prerequisites
- Any user with default access (the default for every user) can view the list of in-place upgrade recommendations.
Procedure
Go to Red Hat Insights > Operations > Advisor > Topics > In-place upgrade to view recommendations affecting the success of in-place upgrades.
NoteCurrently, the in-place upgrade recommendations list only shows recommendations that Insights has identified as upgrade inhibitors. All in-place upgrade recommendations, including non-inhibitors, can be seen in the detailed view of each executed task.
6.5. Remediating upgrade-inhibiting recommendations
You can use the in-place upgrade recommendations list as a basis for remediating upgrade-inhibiting issues on systems in your infrastructure.
Some recommendations have a playbook available for automating the execution of remediations directly from the Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux UI. However, some recommendations require manual resolutions, the steps of which are customized for the system and recommendation pair, and are provided with the recommendation. You can tell which recommendations have playbooks available by viewing the Remediation column in the list of recommendations.
For more information about Insights remediations, see the Red Hat Insights Remediations Guide.
6.5.1. Using Insights remediation playbooks to resolve RHEL upgrade-inhibiting recommendations
You can automate the remediation of upgrade-inhibiting recommendations using Ansible Playbooks that you create in Insights. Use the following procedure to locate your inhibitor issues and select recommendations and systems to remediate.
Prerequisites
- Prerequisites are listed in the Requirements and prerequisites section of this chapter.
Procedure
- Go to Red Hat Insights > Operations > Advisor > Topics > In-place upgrade to view recommendations affecting the success of in-place upgrades.
Choose a recommendation with the word "Playbook" in the Remediation tab, which indicates issues that have a playbook available.
For each recommendation with an available playbook, take the following actions:
- Click on the recommendation to see more information about the issue, including the systems that are affected.
Check the box next to each system you want to add to the playbook and click Remediate.
- In the popup, select Create a new playbook and enter a name for the playbook, then click Next.
- Optional: Alternatively, you can add the resolution for the selected systems to an existing playbook.
- Review the included systems and click Next.
Review the included recommendation. You can click the carat next to the recommendation name to see included systems.
ImportantSome resolutions require the system to reboot. Auto reboot is not enabled by default but you can enable it by clicking Turn on autoreboot above the list of recommendations.
- Click Submit. The final popup view confirms that the playbook was created successfully. You can select to return to the application or open the playbook.
- Find the playbook in Automation Toolkit > Remediations and click on it to open it.
- The playbook includes a list of actions. Select the actions to execute by checking the box next to each one.
- Click Execute playbook to run the playbook on the specified systems.
- On the popup, click on the Execute playbook on systems button. The playbook runs on those systems.
6.5.2. Remediating RHEL upgrade-inhibiting recommendations manually
You can remediate upgrade-inhibiting recommendations by manually applying resolution steps on affected systems. The following procedure shows how to find the resolution steps for a system and recommendation pairing.
Prerequisites
- Prerequisites are listed in the Requirements and prerequisites section of this chapter.
Procedure
- Go to Red Hat Insights > Operations > Advisor > Topics > In-place upgrade to view recommendations affecting the success of in-place upgrades.
Choose a recommendation with the word "Manual" in the *Remediation tab, which indicates that the issue requires manual remediation.
For each recommendation requiring a manual remediation, take the following actions:
Click on the recommendation to open the recommendation-details page, which shows affected systems.
- Click on a system name.
- Pick a recommendation to resolve manually and click on the carat to view the Steps to resolve the recommendation on the system.
- Perform the resolution steps on the system.
- Repeat steps b, c, and d for each affected system.
Chapter 7. Using Insights Tasks to update image-mode RHEL systems
While building systems using image mode for RHEL, you can connect your systems to Red Hat Insights. Once connected, use the Red Hat Insights task, Initiate an update of your image mode RHEL host, to update your Insights-connected systems to the latest versions of RHEL. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 9.4 and later includes image mode for RHEL.
Image mode for RHEL uses the terms update and upgrade interchangeably.
Additional Resources
7.1. Initiating an update for a RHEL image mode host using using tasks
You can initiate an upgrade for image-mode RHEL systems using Insights tasks. You might run the Initiate Update for image mode for RHEL host task if you have a large number of image-mode RHEL systems to update. Or, you might run the task if you want to avoid updating systems using the automatic upgrades option.
Running the task performs the following actions:
- Checks the container repository for a new container image.
- Downloads the image and extracts content for use on next boot.
- If updated content is available, reboots the host to pull in new image content.
- Provides results about whether the image was updated.
The image mode for RHEL update is sometimes referred to as a bootc update.
Image mode for RHEL is a Technology Preview feature only. Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete. Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.
For more information about the support scope of Red Hat Technology Preview features, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.
Prerequisites
- You are logged in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.
- You are a member of a User Access group that has the Tasks administrator role.
You have Insights-connected systems, and have addressed dependencies for one of the following:
-
remote host configuration (RHC),
rhc-worker-playbookandansible-core. - Satellite 6.11+. See Enabling host communication with Insights in the Red Hat Insights Remediations Guide.
-
remote host configuration (RHC),
-
You have built image-mode RHEL systems using the
bootcimage builder, and you can identify those systems. (For more information about image mode for RHEL using RHEL bootable container images on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 or later, see Using image mode for RHEL to build, deploy, and manage operating systems Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.)
Procedure
- Go to Automation Toolkit > Tasks, and log in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, if needed. The Available tab (the default view) shows you a list of tasks available for you to run. Click the Activity tab to show the history of all the tasks run on your account.
Find the Initiate Update for image mode for RHEL host task.
- Click Select systems.
- Select the systems on which to run the task. You can use filters to search and filter systems by Name, Operating System, Group, Tags, and Task Eligibility (the default filter shows systems registered using RHC).
The filter does not filter for image mode for RHEL (or bootc) systems. You can filter systems running 9.4 or later to create a better list of systems on which to run the task. If needed, click the system name to find out if there is a system fact with bootc information.
In this example, one system is selected.
Completing the next step results in a reboot of your selected systems. In addition, if you need to roll back your systems to the previous state, see Chapter 5. Managing RHEL bootable images Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 in Using image mode for RHEL to build, deploy, and manage operating systems.
Click Run Task. A pop-up alerts you that the task is running.
Review the information in the Status and Message fields on the Activity page. For this example, the message is Bootc upgrade complete. Expand for details.
Click the drop-down arrow next to the system name to get more details about the task. You will see more details about the task results, such as the image hash.
Running the task might result in no updates because the system is already up to date.
Troubleshooting
To resolve issues with the task, you can find the answers to some common issues within documentation for other tasks. Red Hat Insights tasks use a common framework of tools, language, and resources within the service, If you have trouble completing this task,
Try running the task again.
- If the task failed, go to the Task details page and click Run task again.
- Review Troubleshooting issues with Red Hat Insights conversions to find information about how to resolve issues that have similar error messages.
Providing feedback on Red Hat documentation
We appreciate and prioritize your feedback regarding our documentation. Provide as much detail as possible, so that your request can be quickly addressed.
Prerequisites
- You are logged in to the Red Hat Customer Portal.
Procedure
To provide feedback, perform the following steps:
- Click the following link: Create Issue
- Describe the issue or enhancement in the Summary text box.
- Provide details about the issue or requested enhancement in the Description text box.
- Type your name in the Reporter text box.
- Click the Create button.
This action creates a documentation ticket and routes it to the appropriate documentation team. Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback.
