Chapter 5. Provisioning Bare Metal Hosts

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > Create Host.
2. In the Name field, enter a name for the host.
3. Click the Organization and Location tabs and change the context to match your requirements.
4. From the Host Group list, select a host group that you want to use to populate the form.
5. Click the Interface tab, and on the host’s interface, click Edit.

6. Verify that the fields are populated with values. Note in particular:

   • The Name from the Host tab becomes the DNS name.
   • Satellite Server automatically assigns an IP address for the new host.
7. In the MAC address field, enter a MAC address for the host. This ensures the identification of the host during the PXE boot process.
8. Ensure that Satellite Server automatically selects the Managed, Primary, and Provision options for the first interface on the host. If not, select them.
9. Click the Operating System tab, and verify that all fields contain values. Confirm each aspect of the operating system.
10. Click Resolve in Provisioning template to check the new host can identify the right provisioning templates to use.

11. Optional: If you want to use VLAN tagging, you must add the VLAN ID to the PXELinux or PXEGrub2 template. To the APPEND line, add vlanid=example_vlanid.

    For more information about associating provisioning templates, see Section 3.6, “Creating Provisioning Templates”.

12. Click the Parameters tab, and ensure that a parameter exists that provides an activation key. If not, add an activation key.
13. Click Submit to save the host details.

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > Discovered host. Select the host you want to use and click Provision to the right of the list.

2. Select from one of the two following options:

   • To provision a host from a host group, select a host group, organization, and location, and then click Create Host.
   • To provision a host with further customization, click Customize Host and enter the additional details you want to specify for the new host.

3. Verify that the fields are populated with values. Note in particular:

   • The Name from the Host tab becomes the DNS name.
   • Satellite Server automatically assigns an IP address for the new host.
   • Satellite Server automatically populates the MAC address from the Discovery results.
4. Ensure that Satellite Server automatically selects the Managed, Primary, and Provision options for the first interface on the host. If not, select them.
5. Click the Operating System tab, and verify that all fields contain values. Confirm each aspect of the operating system.

6. Click Resolve in Provisioning template to check the new host can identify the right provisioning templates to use.

   For more information about associating provisioning templates, see Section 3.6, “Creating Provisioning Templates”.

7. Click Submit to save the host details.

For CLI Users

1. Identify the discovered host to use for provisioning:

   # hammer discovery list

2. Select a host and provision it using a host group. Set a new host name with the --new-name option:

   # hammer discovery provision --name "host_name" \
   --new-name "new_host_name" --organization "My_Organization" \
   --location "My_Location" --hostgroup "My_Host_Group" --build true \
   --enabled true --managed true

   This removes the host from the discovered host listing and creates a host entry with the provisioning settings. The Discovery image automatically resets the host so that it can boot to PXE. The host detects the DHCP service on Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule and starts installing the operating system from its Kickstart tree. When the installation completes, the host also registers to Satellite Server using an activation key and installs the necessary configuration and management tools from the Red Hat Satellite Tools repository.

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Configure > Discovery rules. Select Create Rule and enter the following details:
2. In the Name field, enter a name for the rule.
3. In the Search field, enter the rules to determine whether to provision a host. This field provides suggestions for values you enter and allows operators for multiple rules. For example: cpu_count > 8.
4. From the Host Group list, select the host group to use as a template for this host.

5. In the Hostname field, enter the pattern to determine host names for multiple hosts. This uses the same ERB syntax that provisioning templates use. The host name can use the @host attribute for host-specific values and the rand function for a random number.

   • myhost-<%= rand(99999) %>
   • abc-<%= @host.facts['bios_vendor'] + '-' + rand(99999).to_s %>
   • xyz-<%= @host.hostgroup.name %>
   • srv-<%= @host.discovery_rule.name %>

   • server-<%= @host.ip.gsub('.','-') + '-' + @host.hostgroup.subnet.name %>

     Because the rand() function returns an integer that cannot be concatenated with a string, use the to_s function to change the integer to a string. When creating host name patterns, ensure the resulting host names are unique, do not start with numbers, and do not contain underscores or dots. A good approach is to use unique information provided by Facter, such as the MAC address, BIOS, or serial ID.

6. In the Hosts limit field, enter the maximum hosts you can provision with the rule. Enter 0 for unlimited.
7. In the Priority field, enter a number to set the precedence the rule has over other rules. Rules with lower values have a higher priority.
8. From the Enabled list, select whether you want to enable the rule.
9. To set a different provisioning context for the rule, click the Organizations and Locations tabs and select the contexts you want to use.
10. Click Submit to save your rule.

11. Navigate to Hosts > Discovered Host and select one of the following two options:

    • From the Discovered hosts list on the right, select Auto-Provision to automatically provisions a single host.
    • On the upper right of the window, click Auto-Provision All to automatically provisions all hosts.

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > Create Host.
2. In the Name field, enter a name that you want to become the provisioned system’s host name.
3. Click the Organization and Location tabs and change the context to match your requirements.
4. From the Host Group list, select a host group that you want to use to populate the form.
5. Click the Interface tab, and on the host’s interface, click Edit.

6. Verify that the fields are populated with values. Note in particular:

   • The Name from the Host tab becomes the DNS name.
   • Satellite Server automatically assigns an IP address for the new host.
7. In the MAC address field, enter a MAC address for the host.
8. Ensure that Satellite Server automatically selects the Managed, Primary, and Provision options for the first interface on the host. If not, select them.
9. Click the Operating System tab, and verify that all fields contain values. Confirm each aspect of the operating system.

10. Click Resolve in Provisioning template to check the new host can identify the right provisioning templates to use.

    For more information about associating provisioning templates, see Section 3.6, “Creating Provisioning Templates”.

11. Click the Parameters tab, and ensure that a parameter exists that provides an activation key. If not, add an activation key.
12. Click Submit to save the host details.

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > Provisioning Templates.
2. Create a provisioning template, or clone and edit an existing template. For more information, see Section 3.6, “Creating Provisioning Templates”.
3. In the template, click the Template tab.

4. In the Template editor field, add the create_users snippet to the %post section:

   <%= snippet('create_users') %>

5. Select the Default check box.
6. Click the Association tab.
7. From the Application Operating Systems list, select an operating system.
8. Click Submit to save the provisioning template.

9. Create a host that is associated with the provisioning template or rebuild a host using the OS associated with the modified template. For more information, see Creating a Host in the Managing Hosts guide.

   The SSH keys of the Owned by user are added automatically when the create_users snippet is executed during the provisioning process. You can set Owned by to an individual user or a user group. If you set Owned by to a user group, the SSH keys of all users in the user group are added automatically.

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Content > Products and in the Products window, click the Repositories tab.
2. Select a Kickstart repository and for the Publish via HTTP, option, click the Edit icon, select the check box, and click Save.
3. Repeat the previous steps for the Satellite repository.

1. Open the /usr/share/foreman-discovery-image/foreman-discovery-image.ks file for editing:

   # vim /usr/share/foreman-discovery-image/foreman-discovery-image.ks

2. Replace repo --name=rhel --baseurl=http://download/00000 with with your own repos for RHEL and Satellite with your repository URLs. To find the URLs, navigate to Content > Products and click the Repositories tab and copy the URL for both repositories into the file:

   repo --name=rhel --baseurl=http://download/released/RHEL-7/7.4/Server/x86_64/os/
   repo --name=sat --baseurl=http://download2/nightly/Satellite/6.4/candidate/latest-Satellite-6.4-RHEL-7/compose/Satellite/x86_64/os/

3. Run the livecd-creator tool:

   # livecd-creator --title="Discovery-Image" \
   --compression-type=xz \
   --cache=var/cache/build-fdi \
   --config /usr/share/foreman-discovery-image/foreman-discovery-image.ks \
   --fslabel fdi \
   --tmpdir /var/tmp

   If you change fdi in the --fslabel option, you must also change the root label on the kernel command line when loading the image. fdi or the alternative name is appended to the .iso file that is created as part of this procedure. The PXE Discovery tool uses this name when converting from .iso to PXE.

   Use /var/tmp because this process requires close to 3GB of space and /tmp might have problems if the system is low on swap space.

4. Verify that your fdi.iso file is created:

   # ls *.iso -h

To boot the iso file over a network:

1. To extract the initial ramdisk and kernel files from the .iso file over a network, enter the following command:

   # discovery-iso-to-pxe fdi.iso

2. Create a directory to store your boot files:

   # mkdir /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/myimage

3. Copy the initrd0.img and vmlinuz0 files to your new directory.
4. Edit the KERNEL and APPEND entries in the /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg file to add the information about your own initial ramdisk and kernel files.

1. To convert the .iso file to an .iso hybrid file for PXE provisioning, enter the following command:

   # isohybrid --partok fdi.iso

   If you have grub2 packages installed, you can also use the following command to install a grub2 bootloader:

   # isohybrid --partok --uefi fdi.iso

2. To add md5 checksum to the .iso file so it can pass installation media validation tests in Satellite, enter the following command:

   # implantisomd5 fdi.iso