Upgrading connected Red Hat Satellite to 6.17


Red Hat Satellite 6.17

Upgrade Satellite Server and Capsule

Red Hat Satellite Documentation Team

Abstract

This guide describes how to upgrade a connected Red Hat Satellite Server and Capsule Server.

Providing feedback on Red Hat documentation

We appreciate your feedback on our documentation. Let us know how we can improve it.

Use the Create Issue form in Red Hat Jira to provide your feedback. The Jira issue is created in the Red Hat Satellite Jira project, where you can track its progress.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Click the following link: Create Issue. If Jira displays a login error, log in and proceed after you are redirected to the form.
  2. Complete the Summary and Description fields. In the Description field, include the documentation URL, chapter or section number, and a detailed description of the issue. Do not modify any other fields in the form.
  3. Click Create.

Chapter 1. Upgrading overview

Review the following prerequisites and available upgrade paths before upgrading your current Red Hat Satellite installation to Red Hat Satellite 6.17.

For interactive instructions for performing the upgrade, you can use the Red Hat Satellite Upgrade Helper on the Red Hat Customer Portal. This application provides upgrade instructions customized for your current version number of Satellite. As a result, you receive instructions that are specific to your upgrade path, as well as steps to prevent known issues. For more information, see Satellite Upgrade Helper on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

1.1. Upgrade paths

You can upgrade to Red Hat Satellite 6.17 from Red Hat Satellite 6.16. For complete instructions on how to upgrade, see Chapter 2, Upgrading Red Hat Satellite.

The high-level steps in upgrading Satellite to 6.17 are as follows:

  1. Ensure that your Satellite Servers and Capsule Servers have been upgraded to Satellite 6.16. For more information, see Upgrading connected Red Hat Satellite to 6.16 or Upgrading disconnected Red Hat Satellite to 6.16.
  2. Upgrade your Satellite Server:

    1. Upgrade your Satellite Server to 6.17.
    2. Synchronize the new 6.17 repositories.
  3. Upgrade your Capsule Servers:

    1. Upgrade all Capsule Servers to 6.17.

Capsules at version 6.16 and 6.15 will keep working with your upgraded Satellite Server 6.17. After you upgrade Satellite Server to 6.17, you can upgrade your Capsules separately over multiple maintenance windows. For more information, see Section 1.3, “Upgrading Capsules separately from Satellite”.

Satellite services are shut down during the upgrade. Ensure to plan for the required downtime. The upgrade process duration might vary depending on your hardware configuration, network speed, and the amount of data that is stored on the server.

  • Upgrading Satellite Server takes approximately 1 – 2 hours.
  • Upgrading Capsule Server takes approximately 10 – 30 minutes.

Hammer and API considerations

If you have any scripts that use the Hammer CLI tool, ensure that you modify these scripts according to the changes in Hammer. If you have any integrations that use the Satellite REST API, ensure that you modify these integrations according to the changes in the API. For more information about changes in Hammer and API, see Release notes.

1.2. Prerequisites

Upgrading to Satellite 6.17 affects your entire Satellite infrastructure. Before proceeding, complete the following:

Warning

If you customize configuration files, manually or using a tool such as Hiera, these changes are overwritten when the maintenance script runs during upgrading or updating. You can use the --noop option with the satellite-installer to test for changes. For more information, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution How to use the noop option to check for changes in Satellite config files during an upgrade.

1.3. Upgrading Capsules separately from Satellite

You can upgrade Satellite to version 6.17 and keep Capsules at version 6.16 or 6.15 until you have the capacity to upgrade them too.

All the functionality that worked previously works on 6.15 and 6.16 Capsules.

However, the functionality added in the 6.17 release will not work until you upgrade Capsules to 6.17.

Upgrading Capsules after upgrading Satellite can be useful in the following example scenarios:

  1. If you want to have several smaller outage windows instead of one larger window.
  2. If Capsules in your organization are managed by several teams and are located in different locations.
  3. If you use a load-balanced configuration, you can upgrade one load-balanced Capsule and keep other load-balanced Capsules at one version lower. This allows you to upgrade all Capsules one after another without any outage.

1.4. Following the progress of the upgrade

Because of the lengthy upgrade time, use a utility such as tmux to suspend and reattach a communication session. You can then check the upgrade progress without staying connected to the command shell continuously. For more information, see the tmux manual page.

If you lose connection to the command shell where the upgrade command is running you can see the logs in /var/log/foreman-installer/satellite.log to check if the process completed successfully.

Chapter 2. Upgrading Red Hat Satellite

Use the following procedures to upgrade your existing Red Hat Satellite to Red Hat Satellite 6.17.

2.1. Satellite Server upgrade considerations

This section describes how to upgrade Satellite Server from 6.16 to 6.17. You can upgrade from any minor version of Satellite Server 6.16.

Before you begin

  • Review Section 1.2, “Prerequisites”.
  • Note that you can upgrade Capsules separately from Satellite. For more information, see Section 1.3, “Upgrading Capsules separately from Satellite”.
  • Review and update your firewall configuration. For more information, see Preparing your environment for installation in Installing Satellite Server in a connected network environment.
  • Ensure that you do not delete the manifest from the Customer Portal or in the Satellite web UI because this removes all the entitlements of your content hosts.
  • If you have edited any of the default templates, back up the files either by cloning or exporting them. Cloning is the recommended method because that prevents them being overwritten in future updates or upgrades. To confirm if a template has been edited, you can view its History before you upgrade or view the changes in the audit log after an upgrade. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Monitor > Audits and search for the template to see a record of changes made. If you use the export method, restore your changes by comparing the exported template and the default template, manually applying your changes.
  • Optional: Clone your Satellite Server to test the upgrade. After you successfully test the upgrade on the clone, you can repeat the upgrade on your primary Satellite Server and discard the clone, or you can promote the clone to your primary Satellite Server and discard the previous primary Satellite Server. For more information, see Cloning Satellite Server in Administering Red Hat Satellite.

Capsule considerations

  • If you use content views to control updates to the base operating system of Capsule Server, or for Capsule Server repository, you must publish updated versions of those content views.
  • Note that Satellite Server upgraded from 6.16 to 6.17 can use Capsule Servers still at 6.15 and 6.16.
Warning

If you implemented custom certificates, you must retain the content of both the /root/ssl-build directory and the directory in which you created any source files associated with your custom certificates.

Failure to retain these files during an upgrade causes the upgrade to fail. If these files have been deleted, they must be restored from a backup in order for the upgrade to proceed.

Upgrade scenarios

You cannot upgrade a self-registered Satellite. You must migrate a self-registered Satellite to the Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN) and then perform the upgrade.

FIPS mode

You cannot upgrade Satellite Server from a RHEL base system that is not operating in FIPS mode to a RHEL base system that is operating in FIPS mode.

To run Satellite Server on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux base system operating in FIPS mode, you must install Satellite on a freshly provisioned RHEL base system operating in FIPS mode. For more information, see Preparing your environment for installation in Installing Satellite Server in a connected network environment.

2.2. Upgrading a connected Satellite Server

Use this procedure for a Satellite Server with access to the public internet

Warning

If you customize configuration files, manually or using a tool such as Hiera, these changes are overwritten when the maintenance script runs during upgrading or updating. You can use the --noop option with the satellite-installer to test for changes. For more information, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution How to use the noop option to check for changes in Satellite config files during an upgrade.

Upgrade Satellite Server

  1. Stop all Satellite services:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain service stop
  2. Take a snapshot or create a backup:

    • On a virtual machine, take a snapshot.
    • On a physical machine, create a backup.
  3. Start all Satellite services:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain service start
  4. Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration in the /etc/zones.conf or /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf files, back up the configuration files because the installer only supports one domain or subnet, and therefore restoring changes from these backups might be required.
  5. Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration files and do not want to overwrite the changes, enter the following command:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-installer \
    --foreman-proxy-dhcp-managed=false \
    --foreman-proxy-dns-managed=false
  6. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > Discovered hosts. On the Discovered Hosts page, power off and then delete the discovered hosts. From the Select an Organization menu, select each organization in turn and repeat the process to power off and delete the discovered hosts. Make a note to reboot these hosts when the upgrade is complete.
  7. Ensure that the Satellite Maintenance repository is enabled:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # subscription-manager repos --enable \
    satellite-maintenance-6.17-for-rhel-9-x86_64-rpms
  8. Upgrade satellite-maintain to its next version:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain self-upgrade
  9. Use the health check option to determine if the system is ready for upgrade. When prompted, enter the hammer admin user credentials to configure satellite-maintain with hammer credentials. These changes are applied to the /etc/foreman-maintain/foreman-maintain-hammer.yml file.

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain upgrade check

    Review the results and address any highlighted error conditions before performing the upgrade.

  10. Optional: Because of the lengthy upgrade time, use a utility such as tmux to suspend and reattach a communication session. You can then check the upgrade progress without staying connected to the command shell continuously.

    If you lose connection to the command shell where the upgrade command is running, you can see the logged messages in the /var/log/foreman-installer/satellite.log file to check if the process completed successfully.

  11. Perform the upgrade:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain upgrade run
  12. If the satellite-maintain command told you to reboot, then reboot the system:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # reboot

2.3. Synchronizing the new repositories

You must enable and synchronize the new 6.17 repositories before you can upgrade Capsule Servers and Satellite clients.

Procedure

  1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Content > Red Hat Repositories.
  2. Toggle the Recommended Repositories switch to the On position.
  3. From the list of results, expand the following repositories and click the Enable icon to enable the repositories:

    • To upgrade Satellite clients, enable the Red Hat Satellite Client 6 repositories for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions that clients use.
    • If you have Capsule Servers, to upgrade them, enable the following repositories too:

      Red Hat Satellite Capsule 6.17 (for RHEL 9 x86_64) (RPMs)

      Red Hat Satellite Maintenance 6.17 (for RHEL 9 x86_64) (RPMs)

      Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (for x86_64 – BaseOS) (RPMs)

      Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (for x86_64 – AppStream) (RPMs)

    Note

    If the 6.17 repositories are not available, refresh the Red Hat Subscription Manifest. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Content > Subscriptions, click Manage Manifest, then click Refresh.

  4. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Content > Sync Status.
  5. Click the arrow next to the product to view the available repositories.
  6. Select the repositories for 6.17. Note that Red Hat Satellite Client 6 does not have a 6.17 version. Choose Red Hat Satellite Client 6 instead.
  7. Click Synchronize Now.

    Important

    If an error occurs when you try to synchronize a repository, refresh the manifest. If the problem persists, raise a support request. Do not delete the manifest from the Customer Portal or in the Satellite web UI; this removes all the entitlements of your content hosts.

  8. If you use content views to control updates to the base operating system of Capsule Server, update those content views with new repositories, publish, and promote their updated versions. For more information, see Managing content views in Managing content.

2.4. Performing post-upgrade tasks

  • Optional: If the default provisioning templates have been changed during the upgrade, recreate any templates cloned from the default templates. If the custom code is executed before and/or after the provisioning process, use custom provisioning snippets to avoid recreating cloned templates. For more information about configuring custom provisioning snippets, see Creating Custom Provisioning Snippets in Provisioning hosts.
  • Pulp is introducing more data about container manifests to the API. This information allows Katello to display manifest labels, annotations, and information about the manifest type, such as if it is bootable or represents flatpak content. As a result, migrations must be performed to pull this content from manifests into the database.

This migration takes time, so a pre-migration runs automatically after the upgrade to 6.17 to reduce future upgrade downtime. While the pre-migration is running, Satellite Server is fully functional but uses more hardware resources.

2.5. Upgrading Capsule Servers

This section describes how to upgrade Capsule Servers from 6.16 to 6.17.

Before you begin

  • Review Section 1.2, “Prerequisites”.
  • You must upgrade Satellite Server before you can upgrade any Capsule Servers. Note that you can upgrade Capsules separately from Satellite. For more information, see Section 1.3, “Upgrading Capsules separately from Satellite”.
  • Ensure the Red Hat Satellite Capsule 6.17 repository is enabled in Satellite Server and synchronized.
  • Ensure that you synchronize the required repositories on Satellite Server. For more information, see Section 2.3, “Synchronizing the new repositories”.
  • If you use content views to control updates to the base operating system of Capsule Server, update those content views with new repositories, publish, and promote their updated versions. For more information, see Managing content views in Managing content.
  • Ensure the Capsule’s base system is registered to the newly upgraded Satellite Server.
  • Ensure the Capsule has the correct organization and location settings in the newly upgraded Satellite Server.
  • Review and update your firewall configuration prior to upgrading your Capsule Server. For more information, see Preparing Your Environment for Capsule Installation in Installing Capsule Server.
Warning

If you implemented custom certificates, you must retain the content of both the /root/ssl-build directory and the directory in which you created any source files associated with your custom certificates.

Failure to retain these files during an upgrade causes the upgrade to fail. If these files have been deleted, they must be restored from a backup in order for the upgrade to proceed.

Upgrading Capsule Servers

  1. Create a backup.

  2. Clean yum cache:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # yum clean metadata
  3. Synchronize the satellite-capsule-6.17-for-rhel-9-x86_64-rpms repository in the Satellite Server.
  4. Publish and promote a new version of the content view with which the Capsule is registered.
  5. Optional: Because of the lengthy upgrade time, use a utility such as tmux to suspend and reattach a communication session. You can then check the upgrade progress without staying connected to the command shell continuously.

    If you lose connection to the command shell where the upgrade command is running, you can see the logged messages in the /var/log/foreman-installer/capsule.log file to check if the process completed successfully.

  6. The rubygem-foreman_maintain is installed from the Satellite Maintenance repository or upgraded from the Satellite Maintenance repository if currently installed.

    Ensure that the Satellite Maintenance repository is enabled:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # subscription-manager repos --enable \
    satellite-maintenance-6.17-for-rhel-9-x86_64-rpms

    Ensure Capsule has access to satellite-maintenance-6.17-for-rhel-9-x86_64-rpms and execute:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain self-upgrade
  7. On Capsule Server, verify that the foreman_url setting points to the Satellite FQDN:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # grep foreman_url /etc/foreman-proxy/settings.yml
  8. Use the health check option to determine if the system is ready for upgrade:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain upgrade check

    Review the results and address any highlighted error conditions before performing the upgrade.

  9. Perform the upgrade:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain upgrade run
  10. If the satellite-maintain command told you to reboot, then reboot the system:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # reboot
  11. Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration files, check and restore any changes required to the DNS and DHCP configuration files using the backups made earlier.

Upgrading Capsule Servers using remote execution

  1. Create a backup or take a snapshot.

    For more information on backups, see Backing Up Satellite Server and Capsule Server in Administering Red Hat Satellite.

  2. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Monitor > Jobs.
  3. Click Run Job.
  4. From the Job category list, select Maintenance Operations.
  5. From the Job template list, select Capsule Upgrade Playbook.
  6. In the Search Query field, enter the host name of the Capsule.
  7. Ensure that Apply to 1 host is displayed in the Resolves to field.
  8. In the target_version field, enter the target version of the Capsule.
  9. In the whitelist_options field, enter the options.
  10. Select the schedule for the job execution in Schedule.
  11. In the Type of query section, click Static Query.

2.6. Upgrading the external database

If your Satellite Server uses an external database, the database will be upgraded when running satellite-installer on your Satellite Server.

Prerequisites

  • PostgreSQL version 13 is installed on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux host.

Procedure

  1. Update permissions to prepare the postgresql-evr extension for removal:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # runuser -l postgres -c \
    "psql -d foreman -c \"UPDATE pg_extension SET extowner = (SELECT oid FROM pg_authid WHERE rolname='foreman') WHERE extname='evr';\""
  2. Follow Section 2.2, “Upgrading a connected Satellite Server”.

2.7. Upgrading the external database operating system

If your Satellite uses an external database, you can upgrade the database from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 while upgrading Satellite from 6.16 to 6.17.

Prerequisites

  • Create a host running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 for PostgreSQL server that follows the external database on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 documentation. For more information, see Using external databases with Satellite.

Procedure

  1. Create a backup of your existing external database.
  2. Restore the backup on the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 server.
  3. Verify that Satellite can reach the new database:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # PGPASSWORD='My_Foreman_Database_Password' psql -h postgres.example.com -p 5432 -U foreman -d foreman -c "SELECT 1 as ping"
  4. If your Satellite Server can reach the new database server by using the old name, no further changes are required. Otherwise, reconfigure Satellite to use the new name:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-installer \
    --foreman-db-host newpostgres.example.com \
    --katello-candlepin-db-host newpostgres.example.com \
    --foreman-proxy-content-pulpcore-postgresql-host newpostgres.example.com

Appendix A. Troubleshooting permission issues

Satellite upgrades perform pre-upgrade checks. If the pre-upgrade check discovers permission issues, it fails with an error similar to the following one:

Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
2024-01-29T20:50:09 [W|app|] Could not create role 'Ansible Roles Manager': ERF73-0602 [Foreman::PermissionMissingException]: some permissions were not found:

If you see an error like this on your Satellite Server, identify and remedy the permission issues.

Procedure

  1. On your Satellite Server, identify permission issues:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain health check --label duplicate_permissions
  2. Fix permission issues:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # foreman-rake db:seed

Verification

  • Rerun the check to ensure no permission issues remain:

    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    # satellite-maintain health check --label duplicate_permissions

Legal Notice

Copyright © 2025 Red Hat, Inc.
The text of and illustrations in this document are licensed by Red Hat under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license ("CC-BY-SA"). An explanation of CC-BY-SA is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. In accordance with CC-BY-SA, if you distribute this document or an adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version.
Red Hat, as the licensor of this document, waives the right to enforce, and agrees not to assert, Section 4d of CC-BY-SA to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.
Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, the Red Hat logo, JBoss, OpenShift, Fedora, the Infinity logo, and RHCE are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.
Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries.
Java® is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
XFS® is a trademark of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.
MySQL® is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States, the European Union and other countries.
Node.js® is an official trademark of Joyent. Red Hat is not formally related to or endorsed by the official Joyent Node.js open source or commercial project.
The OpenStack® Word Mark and OpenStack logo are either registered trademarks/service marks or trademarks/service marks of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries and are used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. We are not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Back to top
Red Hat logoGithubredditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust. Explore our recent updates.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

Theme

© 2025 Red Hat, Inc.