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Chapter 3. Use activation keys

With root privileges, you can use an activation key with a registration command to connect your system to Red Hat from the command line. Using an activation key and organization ID combination instead of a username and password combination increases security and facilitates automation. If an RHC administrator has preconfigured the activation key with system-level features, then the selected features are automatically applied to the system during the registration process.

You can use an activation key and a numeric organization identifier (organization ID) with the subscription-manager register command to register a system to Red Hat. If an RHC administrator has preconfigured the activation key to apply the selected system-level features, such as system purpose attributes, then those features are automatically applied to the system during the registration process.

The activation keys and ID for your organization are displayed on the Activation Keys page in the Hybrid Cloud Console.

To use an activation key to register a system with Subscription Manager, complete the following steps.

Prerequisites

  • You have a product subscription for RHEL 8.7 or earlier or you have a Satellite Server.

  • You are logged in to the Hybrid Cloud Console.

    Note

    You cannot log in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console with your email unless your email is your Red Hat login.

  • You are logged in as the root user.
  • You have the numeric identifier for your organization (organization ID).

Procedure

  1. From the terminal, enter the following command, where <activation_key_name> is the name of the activation key that you want to use and <organization_ID> is your organization ID: 

    # subscription-manager register --activation-key=<activation_key_name> --organization=<organization_ID>

    The expected output confirms that your system is registered. For example: 

    The system has been registered with id:
62edc0f8-855b-4184-b1b8-72a9dc793b96

  2. Optional: from the terminal, enter the following command to connect the registered system to Red Hat Lightspeed: 

    yum install insights-client
insights-client --register
    Note

    The insights-client --register command uses the same identity certificate that subscription-manager register uses. Therefore, you do not need to authenticate the insights-client --register command if you have already used an authentication token to register with the subscription-manager register command.

Verification

To confirm that the system was successfully registered, you can view it in the system Inventory on the Hybrid Cloud Console.

The activation keys that you create in the Hybrid Cloud Console combine all the system registration steps into one secure, automated process.

With root privileges, you can use an activation key and a numeric organization identifier (organization ID) with the rhc connect command to register a system to multiple Red Hat hosted services, including Red Hat Lightspeed, with a single command. If an remote host configuration has preconfigured the activation key to apply the selected system-level features, such as system purpose attributes, then those features are automatically applied to the system during the registration process.

You can use an activation key and a numeric organization identifier (organization ID) with the rhc connect command to register a system to Red Hat and enable Red Hat Lightspeed with a single command. If an RHC administrator has preconfigured the activation key to apply selected system-level features, such as system purpose attributes, then those features are automatically applied to the system during the registration process.

The activation keys and ID for your organization are displayed on the Activation Key page in the Hybrid Cloud Console.

To use an activation key to register a system with the rhc client, complete the following step.

Prerequisites

  • You have a product subscription for RHEL 8.8 or later.
  • You are logged in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.
  • You are logged in as the root user.
  • You have the numeric identifier for your organization (organization ID).

Procedure

  • From the terminal, enter the following command, where <activation_key_name> is the name of the activation key that you want to use and <organization_ID> is your organization ID: 

    # rhc connect --activation-key=<activation_key_name> --organization=<organization_ID>

    The expected output confirms that your system is registered. For example: 

    The system has been registered with id:
62edc0f8-855b-4184-b1b8-72a9dc793b96

Verification

To confirm that the system was successfully registered, you can view it in the system Inventory on the Hybrid Cloud Console.

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