12.5. Remote Commands

With the flexibility this tool offers comes great risk and the responsibility to mitigate that risk. For all practical purposes, this feature grants a root BASH prompt to anyone with administrative access to the system on the website.

This can be controlled, however, through the same config-enable mechanism used to determine which systems can have their configuration files managed by Red Hat Network. Refer to Section 7.4.2.9.3, “System Details ⇒ Configuration — ” for details.

In short, you must create a directory and file on the UNIX system that tell RHN it is acceptable to run remote commands on the machine. The directory must be named script, the file must be named run, and both must be located in the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/allowed-actions/ directory specific to your UNIX variant.

For instance, in Solaris, issue this command to create the directory:

 mkdir -p /opt/redhat/rhn/solaris/etc/sysconfig/rhn/allowed-actions/script 

 mkdir -p /opt/redhat/rhn/solaris/etc/sysconfig/rhn/allowed-actions/script 

To create the requisite file in Solaris, issue this command:

 touch /opt/redhat/rhn/solaris/etc/sysconfig/rhn/allowed-actions/script/run 

 touch /opt/redhat/rhn/solaris/etc/sysconfig/rhn/allowed-actions/script/run 

You may schedule a remote command in a variety of ways: on an individual system, on multiple systems at once, and to accompany a package action.

To run a remote command on an individual system by itself, open the System Details page and click the Remote Command subtab. (Note that this subtab only appears if the system has a Provisioning entitlement.) On this page, establish the settings for the command. You may identify a specific user, group, and timeout period, as well as the script itself. Select a date and time to begin attempting the command, and click the Schedule Remote Command link.

Similarly, you may issue a remote command on multiple systems at once through the System Set Manager. Select the systems, go to the System Set Manager, click the Misc tab, and scroll down to the Remote Command section. From there you may run a remote command on the selected systems at once.

To run a remote command with a package action, schedule the action through the Packages tab of the System Details page and click Run Remote Command while confirming the action. Use the radio buttons at the top to determine whether the command should run before or after the package action, establish the settings for the command, and click Schedule Package Install/Upgrade.

Note that installing multiple packages that have different remote commands requires scheduling the installs separately or combining the commands into a single script.