Version Revision History

  • 2020/06/15: 2020.06 release

  • 2020/05/21: 2020.05 release

  • 2020/04/16: 2020.04 release

  • 2020/03/19: 2020.03 release

  • 2020/01/31: 2020.01 release

  • 2019/08/02: 4.0.2 release

  • 2018/12/19: 4.0.1 release

  • 2018/10/26: 4.0.0 release

Stay informed

You can stay up-to-date regarding information about Uyuni:

Check the home site https://www.uyuni-project.org

Support

Uyuni is a community-supported project. The ways or contacting the community are available at the home site.

Release model

Uyuni uses a rolling release model (meaning there will be no bugfixing for given Uyuni version, but new frequent versions that will include bugfixes and features)

Check the home site get in contact with the community.

Major changes since Uyuni Server 4.0.0

Features and changes

Version 2020.06

Oracle Linux

Oracle Linux 6, 7 and 8 can now be managed with salt and it will support the same features CentOS 6, 7 and 8 support.

The channels can be managed using spacewalk-common-channels.

Third-party GPG keys now included

Enabling verification of non-SUSE product metadata used to require manual acceptance, and sometimes even manual installation, of the third-party keys for products available from the product tree. Alternatively, an option to not verify the GPG key signature was there.

Uyuni 2020.06 now includes the GPG keys used to sign packages and/or metadata by other the following vendors:

  • CentOS

  • Oracle Linux

  • Ubuntu

  • MicroFocus Open Enterprise Server

Manual acceptance of those keys is no longer required for GPG signature verification for those products to work.

Manual acceptance of GPG keys for any other product or repository is still required for security reasons.

Cluster Management

As you modernize your IT landscape and make use of Software Defined Infrastructure stacks based on technologies like Kubernetes and Ceph, your focus of managing the IT infrastructure has to move from managing individual Linux servers and VMs to managing infrastructure clusters. Multiple cluster types will be supported in coming releases, with Uyuni 2020.06 initially providing support for SUSE CaaSP.

Computing is increasingly being a more complex architecure: redundant servers, scale out, high-availability, etc where you deploy different kinds of clusters, such as SUSE CaaS Platform, SUSE Enterprise Storage or SAP. Managing those as a whole piece of infrastructure instead of as discrete nodes puts you in charge.

Uyuni 2020.06 implements cluster management of SUSE CaaS Platform clusters. Uyuni works hand-in-hand with CaaS Platform to make sure that all cluster operations are issued properly.

The following actions are currently supported:
  • Register an existing cluster to Uyuni

  • Add or remove nodes to the cluster

  • Promote SLES system to managing node

  • Upgrade the cluster

Deployment of CaaS Platform clusters from scratch will be supported in an upcoming version of Uyuni.

Version 2020.05

Repository syncing performance improvements

Repository synchronization has been optimized to perform faster than in previous versions. This applies to if the synchronization is triggered in the WebUI, or from the command prompt using the spacewalk-repo-sync command. It also applies whether the synchronization is invoked manually, or automatically as part of product or custom channel synchronizations. The performance improvement is up six times faster than previous versions, but the improvement depends mostly on your hardware setup, especially the number of CPUs, and how many packages are being synchronized.

IMPORTANT: This requires a vendor change for the package python3-psycopg2-2.8.4-2.1.uyuni.x86_64.

After running zypper update you will need force the vendor change with

zypper in python3-psycopg2-2.8.4-2.1.uyuni.x86_64

Then update again again, so the spacewalk-backend subpackages are updated:

zypper update

As soon as python3-psycopg2-2.8.4 is part of openSUSE Leap 15.1 we will provide instructions use the openSUSE version again.

Image profiles key-value pairs supported as arguments for Docker build

Custom info key-value pairs defined in image profiles are now passed to the Docker build command as build arguments. They can be accessed in Dockerfiles using the ARG command.

Service pack migrations: run a real migration after a successful dry-run

After a Service Pack migration dry-run, if the result is a success you will get a "Run migration" button in the event history to retrieve the "dry-run" settings and confirm the migration with these settings.

Version 2020.04

Recurring actions

Scheduling recurring actions allows you to manage schedules for automated recurring highstate execution on client, group, and organization level depending on the frequency you choose.

This is useful, for example, to apply highstates on a regular schedule and ensure configurations are enforced.

For more information, see the Administration Guide.

Bootstrapping Salt Clients with a Private SSH key (from API)

Before this release, only password authentication was available for bootstrapping Salt clients from the Server.

Now SSH private key authentication is available, including use of a passphrase on the private key. For Uyuni 2020.04 this is only available from the API. It will be made available from the WebUI in a future release.

For security reasons, the private key is stored at the Uyuni Server only for the bootstrap procedure, and removed after bootstrapping is complete. The private key must be provided for each bootstrap.

The new method bootstrapWithPrivateSshKey in the namespace system is documented in the API Documentation.

You can use this example by adjusting the client, keyfile, passphrase, MANAGER_URL, MANAGER_LOGIN and MANAGER_PASSWORD according to your environment:

#!/usr/bin/python
import xmlrpclib

client = '192.168.1.2'
keyfile = '/path/to/priv/key'
passphrase = '' # empty string = no passphrase

conn = xmlrpclib.Server(MANAGER_URL, verbose=0)
key = conn.auth.login(MANAGER_LOGIN, MANAGER_PASSWORD)

with open(keyfile, 'r') as file:
  data = file.read()
  conn.system.bootstrapWithPrivateSshKey(key, server, 22, 'root', data, passphrase, '', False);
conn.auth.logout(key)
CentOS8 Content Lifecycle Management: Better Feedback with Appstreams

The content lifecycle project page in the WebUI now has improved feedback messages about module filters, including missing or conflicting modules, and dependency resolution problems. The messages are in the form of errors that require the user to fix configurations, or warnings about potential problems.

Automated Schema Database Upgrades and Failure Security Mechanism

Database schema upgrades are now applied automatically during services startup, so there is no need to call spacewalk-schema-upgrade manually. A security mechanism has been implemented that prevents Uyuni Services from starting if the schema upgrade has failed.

When this occurs:

  1. When you run spacewalk-service start, it will fail and show an output with information about the error.

  2. All services, including the Apache service, will not start. This will also cause the WebUI to be unavailable.

Large Deployments Guide (draft)

Uyuni is designed by default to work on small and medium scale installations.

For installations with more than 1000 clients per Uyuni Server, adequate hardware sizing and parameter tuning must be performed, and the new guide provides information about how to do it.

Keep in mind there is no hard maximum number of supported systems. Many factors can affect how many clients can reliably be used in a particular installation. Factors can include which features are used, and how the hardware and systems are configured.

Uyuni Hub documentation

The Uyuni Hub announced for 2020.03 has now documentation available as part of the Large Deployments Guide (section Multiple Servers with Hub).

This is a draft release, so please provide feedback using the Resources menu in the online documentation

Public Cloud QuickStart Guide (draft)

This new draft guide shows you the fastest way to get Uyuni up and running in a public cloud. It includes instructions for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Engine.

This is a draft release, so please provide feedback using the Resources menu in the online documentation

CaaSP Grafana Dashboads

CaaSP specific Grafana dashboards have been integrated and can be deployed via the UI.

Prometheus Federation Support in Formulas with Forms

The new version of the Prometheus formula allows configuring federation and pulling relevant metrics from Prometheus instances to provide a global monitoring view.

Note that suitable recording rules have to be configured on the Prometheus instances (for example at CaaSP Prometheus instances).

For more information about Prometheus federation, check the official documentation.

Pre-configured default alerting rules

A default set of alerting rules have been added to monitor the Prometheus instances themselves (meta-monitoring) and the availability of configured targets. The rules can be disabled in the WebUI.

Prometheus Exporters for CentOS8 x86_64

We now provide these Prometheus exporters as packages for CentOS8 x86_64 (compatible also with similar systems such as RHEL8):

Node Exporter Updated to 0.18.1

Keep in mind this new version includes some breaking changes:

  • Renamed interface label to device in netclass collector for consistency with other network metrics

  • The cpufreq metrics now separate the cpufreq and scaling data based on what the driver provides

  • The labels for the network_up metric have changed

  • Bonding collector now uses mii_status instead of operstatus

  • Several systemd metrics have been turned off by default to improve performance. These include unit_tasks_current, unit_tasks_max, service_restart_total, and unit_start_time_seconds

  • The systemd collector blacklist now includes automount, device, mount, and slice units by default

Virtualization: Management of storage pools

Until now users could list the storage pools, which is where the virtual machines disks are stored. Storage pools are where virtual machine disks are stored. In previous versions, you could only list the pools. With this update, you can create, edit, start, stop, refresh, and delete storage pools. This is available from the WebUI, or through Salt states.

Version 2020.03

Debian client tools

We now offer Debian client tools that allow for easy onboarding of Debian as salt minions, as well as running spacecmd from them.

Check the Client Configuration Guide for information about how to configure Uyuni Server to work with Debian clients.

For now the following architectures are supported: x86_64, aarch64, armv7l, i586

We plan to continue improving Debian support in the future, including support for ppc64le and s390x Debian 10 clients.

SUSE Container as a Service Platform v4 nodes: action filtering

Nodes in a SUSE Container as a Service Platforms should be patched, rebooted, etc following CaaSP recommendations to avoid breaking cluster availability and software compability.

In Uyuni 2020.03, we have introduced node locking and action filtering to prevent uninteded operations.

  • When CaaSP nodes are added to Uyuni, the registered systems will be locked automatically:

  • When a system is locked, the web UI shows a warning and you can schedule actions using the web UI or the API, but the action will fail.

You can enable or disable the system lock using the System Lock formula. When the system lock is disabled, all operations are permitted.

Subscription matching in public cloud: BYOS vs PAYG

In Uyuni 4.0.1, we introduced virtual host gatherers for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Engine. With these gatherers, our subscription matcher gained the ability to also include virtual machines running on the cloud in its calculations.

We have now enhanced the subscription matcher to exclude pay-as-you-go (PAYG) instances. Those do not require a subscription, as the agreement between the Cloud Service Provider and the Customer covers them.

Automatic generation of bootstrap repositories

A bootstrap repository contains packages for installing Salt on clients, as well as the required packages for registering Salt or traditional clients during bootstrapping.

In Uyuni 2020.01 and earlier, bootstrap repository creation was a manual step, by using the mgr-create-bootstrap-repo tool.

In Uyuni 2020.03, bootstrap repositories are automatically created and regenerated on the Uyuni Server after a product is synchronized (i. e. all mandatory channels are fully mirrored).

More details, including how to revert to manual invokation, are available from the Client Configuration Guide.

Salt clients: provisioning API

Enable provisioning API with Salt and bootstrap entitled systems. Previously, this only worked for traditional clients.

Recurring highstate scheduling

You can schedule automated recurring highstate actions for Salt clients.

Recurring highstate actions apply the highstate to clients on a specified schedule. You can apply recurring action to individual clients, to all clients in a system group, or to an entire organization. The Recurring Actions section in the Administration Guide contains all the details for this feature.

More improvements in regards to automation will be coming in subsequent releases of Uyuni: maintenance windows and patch automation.

Content Lifecycle Filters for AppStreams

RHEL, SLES ES, CentOS and Oracle Linux 8 appstreams can now be mixed and converted to flat repositories using a new type of CLM filter.

New products enabled
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 12 SP5

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP2 family

  • MicroFocus Open Enterprise Server 2018 SP2 (product GA in Q2 2020)

  • Oracle Linux 8 (using spacewalk-common-channels)

Ubuntu enhancements

Each Uyuni release and maintenance update brings better Ubuntu support. In Uyuni 2020.03, we have include two small but valuable improvements:

  • Support package pre-downloading, to ensure all content (.deb packages) is downloaded before patching. This should be very useful for large Ubuntu deployments managed by Uyuni.

  • Display additional information in the UI for .deb packages (dependencies and more headers)

Yomi (Technology Preview)

Yomi (yet one more installer) is a Salt-based installer for SUSE and openSUSE operating systems.

In Uyuni, Yomi can be used as part of provisioning new clients, as an alternative to AutoYaST. Yomi consists of two components:

  • The Yomi formula, which contains the Salt states and modules required to perform the installation.

  • The operating system image, which includes the pre-configured salt-minion service.

Detailed information on how to use Yomi is available from the Salt Guide.

Yomi is work in progress and more operating systems and features will be added in coming releases.

Uyuni Hub XML-RPC API (Technology Preview)

The Uyuni Hub is a new multi-server architecture we are introducing as a technology preview in Uyuni 2020.03.

Multiple Uyuni Servers can be managed from a single Hub node. The Hub is a Salt master itself and the managed Uyuni Server servers are both a minion (to the hub) and a master (to their own minions).

Uyuni Hub Architecture

The Hub covers a number of use cases, such as:

  • Scalability: when a single Uyuni Server will no longer be enough

  • Intermittently connected and bandwidth-limited sites, which can now be managed with their own schedule thanks to the Hub

  • Multi-tenancy with individual Uyuni Servers. While Uyuni is multi-organization itself, in some scenarios, an even stronger separation is required. The Hub provides a way to manage and aggregate back information for all those Uyuni Server servers.

The Hub comprises a number of components that we will be releasing and enhancing in the future. The first component of the Hub we are now introducing as a Technology Preview is the Hub XML-RPC API, which provides an extended version of the Uyuni Server XML-RPC API, targeted for the multi-server case.

Installation and usage

Install Uyuni Server and then install the hub-xmlrpc-api package. That Uyuni Server is now the Hub Server.

Configuration of hub-xmlrpc-api is specified in a JSON file like the following:

{
   "type": "json",
    "hub": {
       "manager_api_url": "http://localhost/rpc/api"
   },
    "connect_timeout": 10,
    "read_write_timeout": 10,
   }

Set the HUB_CONFIG_FILE environment variable to point to the configuration file. hub-xmlrpc-api is a daemon, currently to be launched from the command line.

Once running, you can connect to the hub-xmlrpc-api at port 8888 via any XMLRPC compliant client libraries (see examples below).

API endpoints, namespaces and examples

Details about usage with Python script examples are available at the Uyuni project site: https://github.com/uyuni-project/hub-xmlrpc-api

spacewalk-utils

In Uyuni 2020.01 and earlier, the spacewalk-utils package contained a mix tested and untested tools.

In Uyuni 2020.03, we have split spacewalk-utils in two packages:

  • spacewalk-utils contains only fully-tested tools:

    • spacewalk-common-channels

    • spacewalk-hostname-rename

    • spacewalk-clone-by-date

    • spacewalk-sync-setup

    • spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle

  • spacewalk-utils-extras contains the tools that untested or not completely tested:

    • apply_errata

    • delete-old-systems-interactive

    • migrate-system-profile

    • spacewalk-api

    • spacewalk-export

    • spacewalk-export-channels

    • spacewalk-final-archive

    • spacewalk-manage-snapshots

    • sw-ldap-user-sync

    • sw-system-snapshot

    • taskotop

    • spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle

Tools in spacewalk-utils-extras are valuable but they are so specific, or require additional customization for each user, that it is not possible for us to test for every use case. If you were using these scripts in spacewalk-utils in Uyuni 2020.01 or earlier, you will need to install spacewalk-utils-extras in Uyuni 2020.03.

EFI HTTP booting

The dhcp formula, branch network formula and pxe formula have been updated to support booting EFI terminals (systems) via HTTP in addition to TFTP.

Subscription matching enhancements

On public cloud providers, the subscription matcher will identify pay-as-you-go instances, whose subscription is provided by the Cloud Service Provider, and will not ask for additional subscriptions.

Also, stackable subscriptions with the same parameters will be aggregated.

Single Sign-On (SSO) is now stable

Uyuni supports Single Sign-On authentication by implementing the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2 protocol. This feature, introduced in 4.0.2 as a Technology Preview, is now declared stable

Uyuni must be reconfigured to use the IdP as the source of authentication and post-login mapped users must be already created before enabling SSO.

For more on configuring SSO, see the Authentication Methods chapter in the Administration guide.

Single Page Application UI (SPA) is now stable

In an effort to provide our web UI users with a smoother navigation, we have implemented large parts of the user interface as a single page application.

This enhancement was started in Uyuni 2020.01 as an opt-in feature and now becomes the default in Uyuni 2020.03

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 onboarding simplified

It is no longer necessary to have Python 3 on RHEL8 systems for the onboarding to work. With this enhancement, even plain-text RHEL machines can be onboarded directly.

Version 2020.01

Version format change

Uyuni is now changing from X.Y version format to YYYY.MM format, and the URLs for the repositories remove the X.Y part.

This will allow easier releases, no need to change URLs at all in the future, and less confussion regarding the relationship between Uyuni and SUSE Manager (Uyuni is always ahead).

Adjust your repository at the Server system

Because of the version format change, you need to adapt your zypper repository at the server before updating.

If you followed the instructions for installation, this command will do it for you:

sed -i -e 's/Uyuni-Server-4.0-POOL-x86_64-Media1/Uyuni-Server-POOL-x86_64-Media1/' /etc/zypp/repos.d/uyuni-server-stable.repo

Otherwise, find the Uyuni Server Stable repository and replace:

baseurl=https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/systemsmanagement:/Uyuni:/Stable/images/repo/Uyuni-Server-4.0-POOL-x86_64-Media1/

with:

baseurl=https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/systemsmanagement:/Uyuni:/Stable/images/repo/Uyuni-Server-POOL-x86_64-Media1/

Remove current Uyuni Proxy 4.0 channel and repository from the Server and add the new ones

If you are currently syncing Uyuni Proxy 4.0 (usually because you have proxies), you need to:

  1. Add the new channel with spacewalk-common-channel uyuni-proxy-stable-leap-151

  2. Sync the new channel (and configure autosync if required)

  3. See what instances are using the channel Uyuni Proxy 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1

  4. Adjust the channels assigned instances from previous step (tip: You can use "System Set Manager") to remove the old one and add the new one.

  5. See what activations key are using the channel Uyuni Proxy 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1

  6. Adjust the activation keys from previous set to remove the old channel and add the new one.

  7. Remove the channel Uyuni Proxy 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1

  8. Remove the repository External - Uyuni Proxy 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1 (x86_64)

Remove current Uyuni Server 4.0 channel and repository from the Server and add the new ones

Most users will not require this unless, but if you have the Uyuni Server 4.0 channel at your server:

  1. Add the new channel with spacewalk-common-channel uyuni-server-stable-leap-151

  2. Sync the new channel (and configure autosync if required)

  3. See what instances are using the channel Uyuni Server 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1

  4. Adjust the channels assigned instances from previous step (tip: You can use "System Set Manager" at the WebUI) to remove the old one and add the new one.

  5. See what activations key are using the channel Uyuni Server 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1

  6. Adjust the activation keys from previous set to remove the old channel and add the new one.

  7. Remove the channel Uyuni Server 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1

  8. Remove the repository External - Uyuni Server 4.0 for openSUSE Leap 15.1 (x86_64)

CentOS8, RHEL 8 and SLES ES 8 support

CentOS 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Expanded Support 8 are now supported clients as Salt minions. The traditional stack will not be supported on these operating systems.

With the new application streams concept introduced in these operating systems, you will need to import both the BaseOS and the AppStream directories from the ISO image for the bootstrap repository to be created correctly. If the AppStream directory is not imported, you will receive an error about missing Python 3 packages.

AppStream awareness in the UI and Content Lifecycle Management will be available in an upcoming version of Uyuni.

Monitoring

This version of Uyuni includes formulas to install Prometheus and Grafana, and makes the Apache exporter available for Ubuntu 18.04, CentOS6, CentOS7 and Proxy.

Additionally, self-monitoring capabilities have been implemented in the Admin Monitoring UI.

Package Hub

SUSE Package Hub is now supported on the Server, since the problems with the search that were caused by PackageHub-provided packages have been solved.

If you were using Package Hub as a source of packages for you clients, it is recommended that you re-generate all package metadata. The reason for this is in the Package Hub repositories there may exist multiple packages with the same NEVRA but different checksums. This might result in checksum errors when repositories are used on the clients as Uyuni randomly selected any of those packages. After this update, Uyuni will generate the checksum into the package path to ensure the right package is used. If you use also Uyuni Proxy please update all of them before you re-generate the metadata.

Formulas

The Formulas with Forms screen has an enhanced layout that folds vertically instead of nesting deep inside, making if cleaner. Besides this, validators are now possible in formulas using the JEXL expression language.

The cpu-mitigations-formula is now installed by default.

The Retail branch network formula now works all SUSE and openSUSE based distros, using SuSEfirewall or firewalld as appropriate.

New Content Lifecycle Management filters

In Uyuni 4.0.2 we introduced Content Lifecycle Management with a filter to exclude packages and patches based on their name. Feedback for this feature was very positive and many proposals for enhancement were received.

In this release, we are introducing a lot of new possibilities for Content Lifecycle Management:

  • New filters: by date, by keyword (e. g. "reboot needed" or "package manager restart required"), by type (security, recommended or optional), by synopsis and "patch contains package".

  • New ALLOW mode, which in addition to the existing DENY mode, makes possible to filter out packages, and then include them again into the resulting set.

  • New matchers: in addition to the existing greater than, lesser than, equals, etc, we have now added a regular expression matcher for package names, patch names, patch synopsis and package names in patches.

  • Better visualization of the filters attached to a CLM project, with ALLOW and DENY now shown on each side of the screen.

We have documented two typical use cases: a monthly patch cycle and live patching.

More enhancements to Content Lifecycle Management will come in future releases of Uyuni.

Enhanced support for Debian and Ubuntu

With each release of Uyuni, we continue to enhance our Debian and Ubuntu support.

Uyuni 2020.01 greatly improves our compatibility thanks to:

  • Support for all of the headers in .deb packages, including custom ones, when syncing Debian/Ubuntu repositories. You can use the new script mgr-update-pkg-extra-tags to update extra fields in DB without recreating all Debian/Ubuntu channels.

  • Support for .deb packages with hyphens in the package name or version. There remain a very small percentage (<0.1%) of packages for which our version comparison algorithm fails; we will fix this known issue in a coming release.

New Prometheus exporters and formulas

A new set of client tool packages now includes Prometheus exporters for more clients: CentOS 6, CentOS 7, RHEL 6, RHEL 7, SLES ES 6, SLES ES 7 and Ubuntu 18.04. Both the Prometheus node exporter and the PostgreSQL exporter are provided for those operating systems. The prometheus-exporters-formula formula makes easy to deploy them.

Subscription matching in Public Cloud

We’ve added new types of Virtual Host Managers in order to gather virtual instances from Public Cloud providers. Azure, AWS and Google Cloud are now supported, in addition to the existing VMware and generic (file-based, manually-maintained, useful for any cloud provider) gatherer modules.

Creating VHM to gather virtual instances from the Public Cloud will enable the subscription matcher to match "1-2 virtual machines" subscriptions for those instances that are running on the same Public Cloud zone.

Please take into account the following considerations in this version. They will be addressed in upcoming versions of Uyuni:

  • This functionality will only work with Salt clients.

  • Manual installation of the virtual-host-gatherer-libcloud package is required.

  • The public cloud gatherers will report and try to match all instances, no matter if they are BYOS or PAYG, leading to an incorrect calculation of the required subscriptions if you combine BYOS and PAYG.

Preventive shutdown of Server when running out of disk space

Some users have hit in the past a database corruption problem when PostgreSQL ran out of space.

In order to prevent that from happening in the future, we have added a diskchecker to Uyuni Server. This feature will send a warning mail when the most common and important Uyuni directories are below 10% of free disk space, and will shut down the Uyuni Server when those directories are below 5% of free disk space.

This new feature is only enabled by defult in new installations. For existing installations, the administrator can enable the tool manually after updating to the latest maintenance update by running:

systemctl --quiet enable spacewalk-diskcheck.timer

systemctl start spacewalk-diskcheck.timer

Full details on the parameterization of this new feature are available in the Managing disk space documentation page.

Single Page Application UI

In an effort to provide our web UI users with a smoother navigation, we have implemented large parts of the user interface as a single page application.

This feature is optional for this release and is disabled by default. To enable it, users can now add web.spa.enable = true to /etc/rhn/rhn.conf, and then restart Tomcat.

Grafana

Grafana is a tool for data visualization, monitoring, and analysis. It is used to create dashboards with panels representing specific metrics over a set period of time. Grafana is commonly used together with Prometheus, but also supports other data sources such as ElasticSearch, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Influx DB.

This version of Uyuni includes Grafana in the client tools repositories. An Uyuni Grafana dashboard is provided as an example.

Monitoring section of the Administration Guide contains full detail on how to configure Grafana together with Uyuni.

Prometheus service autodiscovery

Prometheus is a monitoring tool used to record real-time metrics in a time-series database. Metrics are collected using HTTP pulls, allowing for higher performance and scalability.

We have updated the Prometheus package with a new version that include a built-in service discovery mechanism that will allow users to more easily configure monitoring on their Uyuni systems.

Previously, after configuring the exporters on managed clients, users had to manually configure their Prometheus servers to start scrapping metrics from those systems. With this update, it will be possible to use a "service discovery" mechanism that will automate this part of the configuration. The configuration options are simple: it is only required to provide a Uyuni Server URL and valid API credentials.

Under the hood, what this mechanism does is letting Prometheus poll the Uyuni API, asking for a list of systems that have monitoring enabled, and automatically configuring Prometheus to collect metrics from those systems.

In this version, the autodiscovery functionality is provided as a Technology Preview.

More information about configuring Prometheus can be found in the Monitoring section of the Administration Guide.

CPU mitigation formula

CPU mitigations have been introduced to improve security on CPUs affected by vulnerabilities such as Meltdown and Spectre. The mitigations are available in SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP3 and later in the cpu-mitigations-formula package, which is not installed by default.

The new CPU Mitigation formula allows you to control which mitigations are enabled.

Updated documentation

The Uyuni documentation has received improvements in all of the books, with small clarifications and enhancements all around: content lifecycle management filters, public cloud, JeOS, formulas, etc

Of particular interest for users with large installations will be the new Large Scale Deployment and Salt Tuning sections in the Salt Guide. Given that modifying advanced parameters can cause catastrophic failure, we recommend making a backup and being conservative doing changes.

Additionally, the search functionality in the documentation now works offline.

Enhanced support for Ubuntu and Debian clients

The Multi-Arch and Pre-depends headers are now supported for .deb repositories, hence avoiding installation problems that could arise in some cases when deploying packages from the UI.

Also, Ubuntu and Debian channels now come preconfigured in spacewalk-common-channels. The Debian CDN is used to provide the best mirror at each moment. For Ubuntu, you may want to replace the default mirror with a closer geo-mirror.

Keep in mind SUSE does not provide support for the spacewalk-common-channels tool form the spacewalk-utils package.

New products enabled (from SCC)
  • SLES12 SP3 LTSS

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 12 SP4

  • SLES12 SP5

  • RHEL 8 and SLES ES 8

  • CaaSP 4

  • openSUSE Leap 15.1

SUSE Container as a Service Platform v4 support

The Virtual Host Manager functionality has been extended to support SUSE Container as a Service Platform v4.

You can register each CaaSP node to Uyuni using the same method as you would a Salt client. After doing this, you will be able to see the patch level status of each node, perform configuration management on the nodes and assign channels o clusters.

We strongly recommend to check the documentation on the scope and extent of the CaaSPv4 integration in Uyuni: https://www.uyuni-project.org/uyuni-docs/suse-manager/client-configuration/vhm-caasp.html

Upcoming versions of Uyuni will enhance CaaSP integration.

Other changes
  • Since this version, as part of a bugfix, it is no longer allowed to delete a channel when there are cloned channels based on it.

  • Taskomatic now takes a maximum of 4 GB of RAM (it used to be 2 GB), which better matches the current average use case.

  • Salt clients can now be re-provisioned from Uyuni. This allows major version OS updates for SLES and Uyuni Proxy.

  • Normalize date formats for actions, notifications and CLM

Version 4.0.2

Migrating the Server from 4.0.1 to 4.0.2
If you are using DHCP addresses and you do not use DHCP reservations, migrating from openSUSE Leap 42.3 to Leap 15.0 can change the IP address of your NICs. If using DHCP, make sure your instances have reserved IP addresses.
Before starting, make sure you have a backup of your server, as it will be hard to recover from failures during the migration.

4.0.2 is now based on openSUSE Leap 15.1, so a base OS system is required.

To help administrators with the migration, a new script is provided by the susemanager package at /usr/lib/susemanager/bin/server-migrator.sh

Then, update susemanager package only:

zypper ref
zypper in susemanager

And finally run the script:

/usr/lib/susemanager/bin/server-migrator.sh

After the migration is complete, you will be requested to reboot your server

Uyuni Server 4.0.2 works with SUSE Uyuni Proxy 4.0.1.

When upgrading, upgrade the Server first, followed by the Proxies.

Salt 2019.2.0

Salt has been upgraded to the 2019.2.0 release.

We intend to regularly upgrade Salt to more recent versions.

For more detail about changes in your manually-created Salt states, see the Salt upstream release notes 2019.2.0.

Base system upgrade

The base system was upgraded to openSUSE 15.1.

As a result, all code was ported to run with Python 3 and OpenJDK 11.

Prometheus Monitoring

We now include packages for the latest version of Prometheus, as well as self-monitoring capabilities for Uyuni.

Prometheus is a monitoring tool that is used to record real-time metrics in a time-series database.

For more information about Prometheus, see the Administration Guide

Exporters

Exporters convert existing metrics into the format Prometheus requires. We are now providing the following Prometheus Exporters as packages, for SLE12 and SLE15 as well as openSUSE Leap 15.1:

In addition we provide JMX exporter on Uyuni Server.

Monitoring is not yet available for other operating system platforms like Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Ubuntu.

Self-monitoring features in Uyuni

Uyuni provides metrics about its health to Prometheus. Both Server and Proxy can expose metrics. Self-monitoring can be enabled via the Web UI. For that purpose, some Prometheus exporters are pre-installed on Uyuni Server and Proxy.

A new formula is also included, to install and manage Node and PostgreSQL exporters on clients managed by Salt. This formula can be configured in the Uyuni Web UI.

Content lifecycle management

The content lifecycle management feature allows you to clone software channels through a lifecycle of several environments. You are able to create content projects, select a custom set of software channels as sources, and promote software channels through a pre-defined lifecycle of environments.

You can define filters to exclude specific packages and patches. More filters will be added in a later release.

Once you have selected your sources you can build the selected set which will populate the first environment. After the first environment is built, you can promote it through the environment lifecycle to the next environment in the loop. You can see the status of the build at any time throughout the process.

The result of the build, and the content of every environment, is a channel tree made of cloned software channels of the selected sources, to which systems can be assigned.

Virtualization management for Salt minions

The existing virtualization features have been enhanced for Salt-based systems. This is a technology preview and will require an additional Virtualization Management entitlement. Pricing will be announced soon.

Salt-based virtualization host systems can also create virtual machines using a pre-built disk image.

These features have been added:

  • Deleting virtual machines.

  • Editing virtual machines to add or remove network interfaces or disk, change CPU and memory allocation or the display type.

  • Quick update of the list and state of virtual machines.

  • Displaying virtual machines graphical display in a new tab.

Updated Documentation Structure

In this release, we have reorganized our documentation and updated our tooling to make it clearer where information is, and make it easier for you to find the content you need, when you need it.

Old Naming Format
  • Getting Started

  • Best Practices

  • Reference

  • Advanced Topics

New Naming Format
  • Installation Guide (Requirements, supported platforms, installation methods, etc)

  • Client Configuration Guide (Configuring and connecting clients to Uyuni)

  • Upgrade Guide (Migrate and update clients and Uyuni)

  • Reference Guide (Comprehensive guide to the Web UI)

  • Administration Guide (Maintenance and administration tasks in Uyuni)

  • Salt Guide (A comprehensive guide to Salt for system administrators)

  • Retail Guide (A guide to using Uyuni for Retail)

Improved logging for Salt Remote Command Page

The Salt Remote Command Page log now every command executed in a separate logfile (/var/log/rhn/rhn_salt_remote_commands.log). In addition to this, an entry in the System History is generated for every minion where the command was executed.

Support for more Distributions as Clients

openSUSE Leap 15.1 and SLE15 SP1 can now be managed.

EoL for openSUSE Leap 42.3 clients

openSUSE Leap 42.3 is now End of Life since July 1st, as announced at the openSUSE Mailing lists

While the repositories for Leap 42.3 are still available, no support is provided aymore.

Salt Rate Limiting (Batching)

Any action scheduled on multiple Salt minions has now an upper limit on the number of systems that will process it simultaneously. This is referred to as batch size in Salt jargon, and defaults to 100 minions.

Please check the documentation for performance considerations in large installations (more than 1000 minions).

Product Information Loaded from SCC

In the past information about product channels were shipped via maintenance updates. Now these information will be downloaded from SUSE Customer Center (SCC) like the other product and repository information.

In case of using the fromdir configuration with SMT or RMT, please check if they support already downloading this file. You can get the file with the following command:

curl -O https://scc.suse.com/suma/product_tree.json
Image build host with SLES 12 SP4

Using SLES 12 SP4 as the base OS for an image build host is now supported.

Also building SLES 12 SP4 OS Images is supported.

Updated backend for communicating with SCC

This update contains a new backend to communicate with the SUSE Customer Center (SCC). This requires to run a mgr-sync refresh at the end of the update procedure.

The whole update procedure:

$> spacewalk-service stop
$> zypper patch
$> spacewalk-schema-upgrade
$> spacewalk-service start
$> mgr-sync refresh

In case of Inter Server Sync (ISS) the master needs to be updated first, then the slave.

This change show products like they are setup in the SUSE Customer Center. As a consequence of this some older products show no architecture anymore and mirror all available architectures when such a product is selected for mirroring.

With this change also some invalid product combinations were removed. Please check /var/log/rhn/rhn_web_ui.log for error messages. Invalid channels can be removed using spacewalk-remove-channel command.

XMLRPC API changes

Due to the changes in the backend for communicating with SCC corresponding XMLRPC API has changed:

Deprecated calls:

synchronizeChannels()
synchronizeProductChannels()

New call:

synchronizeRepositories()

For a refresh the XMLRPC API should be called in the following order:

synchronizeChannelFamilies
synchronizeProducts
synchronizeRepositories
synchronizeSubscriptions
Support for Ubuntu Clients

Management of Ubuntu clients is now supported. We provide a repository with salt packages that can easily be added with spacewalk-common-channels or manually.

The following new features were added:

  • Bootstrapping and performing initial state runs such as setting repositories and performing profile updates

  • Assigning .deb channels to minions

  • Information displayed in System details pages

  • Package install, update, and remove

  • Package install using Package States

  • Configuration and state channels

  • Support Ubuntu products and Debian architectures in mgr-sync

  • Support creating bootstrap repositories for Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04

  • Add support for Ubuntu in the bootstrap script

  • Generate InRelease file for Debian/Ubuntu repos when metadata signing is enabled

  • Trust SUSE GPG key for client tools channels on Ubuntu systems

However, the root user on Ubuntu is disabled by default, so in order to use bootstrapping, you will require an existing user with sudo privileges for Python.

Change behavior on token refresh

Channel authentication tokens are valid by default for about 1 year. The renew of tokens happens automatically some time before they expire but they are not deployed automatically to the clients.

As the renew happens mostly without noticing by the administrator that behavior has changed to autodeploy renewed tokens to the clients automatically.

This old behavior can be preserved by setting

token_refresh_auto_deploy = false

in /etc/rhn/rhn.conf and restarting the services.

In case of a token renew without autodeployment enabled a log message will inform the administrator about it.

New option to force regeneration of channel metadata

A new option --force was added to spacecmd softwarechannel_regenerateyumcache to force a regeneration of the metadata files.

New products supported
  • openSUSE Leap 15.1

  • SLES11 SP4 LTSS

  • SLES12 SP3 LTSS

  • SLES 15 SP1 product family

  • CaaSP 4 Toolchain

Package download endpoint override

It is now possible to set a custom protocol, host and path for minions to download packages at installation time. This will override the default setting of the Uyuni Server or Uyuni Proxy used at registration time.

Technical preview: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Uyuni supports Single Sign-On authentication by implementing the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2 protocol. Mandatory requirement: an already existing and configured SAML Identity Service Provider (IdP). Uyuni must be reconfigured to use the IdP as the source of authentication and post-login mapped users must be already created before enabling SSO.

For more on configuring SSO, see the Administration Guide

Version 4.0.1

Support for PostgreSQL 10

A new version of the PostgreSQL database is available in openSUSE Leap 42.3 and can be used for Uyuni Server.

New installations of Uyuni Server based on openSUSE Leap 42.3 will automatically pick up this version.

PostgreSQL 10 needs a new version of smdba to initiate backups. This version is part of Uyuni Server 4.0.1.

Migrating from PostgreSQL 9.6 to PostgreSQL 10

You should have an up-to-date database backup before attempting the migration.

Existing installations of Uyuni Server will need to run

/usr/lib/susemanager/bin/pg-migrate-96-to-10.sh

to migrate from PostgreSQL 9.6 to PostgreSQL 10

Your Uyuni Server installation will not be accessible during the migration.

Note The migration will create a copy of the database under /var/lib/pgsql and thus needs sufficient disk space to hold two copies (9.6 and 10) of the database.

Since it does a full copy of the database, it also needs considerable time depending on the size of the database and the IO speed of the storage.

If your system is scarce on disk space you can do an fast, in-place migration by running

/usr/lib/susemanager/bin/pg-migrate-96-to-10.sh fast

The fast migration usually only takes minutes and no additional disk space. However, in case of failure you need to restore the database from a backup.

This wiki page contains additional information about the database migration.

spacecmd: Support state channels

spacecmd, the command line access to the Uyuni API, has been adapted to support state channels (aka Salt Minion config channels) with the following changes:

  • system_scheduleapplyconfigchannels

    • new call to schedule application of the assigned config channels to the system (minion only)

  • configchannel_updateinitsls

    • new call to update the init.sls file

  • configchannel_create

    • adapted call, now has a -t option to specify the channel type (normal or state)

  • configchannel_import

    • adapted call, honors channel type

Please use the help functionality of spacecmd for detailed option descriptions for each mentioned call.

New API calls

Functions softwarechannel_mergepackages and softwarechannel_errata_merge to merge packages and errata through spacecmd were added.

spacewalk-common-channels: Support for Uyuni, Fedora 29 and cleanup

Added:

  • Uyuni Server, Uyuni Proxy, Uyuni Client Tools, both stable and development version.

  • Fedora 29

Removed:

  • Fedora 26

  • Spacewalk 2.6 Server and Client Tools

  • Spacewalk 2.7 Server and Client Tools

  • Spacewalk 2.8 Server

  • Spacewalk nightly

  • OpenSUSE 13.2 and openSUSE 13.2 Client Tools

Support for more Distributions as Clients

openSUSE Leap 15.0, openSUSE Leap 42.3, SLE12, SLE15, CentOS6 and CentOS7 are now verified to bootstrap as both salt minions and traditional clients.

New products added to SCC syncing
  • SUSE OpenStack Cloud 9

Known issues

python3-psycopg2 and backend packages not being updated

It is happening because the speedup repository syncing feature at Uyuni 2020.05 requires a python3-psycopg2 version not available at openSUSE L

After running zypper update you will need force the vendor change with

zypper in python3-psycopg2-2.8.4-2.1.uyuni.x86_64

Then update again again, so the spacewalk-backend subpackages are updated:

zypper update

As soon as python3-psycopg2-2.8.4 is part of openSUSE Leap 15.1 we will provide instructions use the openSUSE version again.

Ubuntu 20.04 not ready

Despite the are mentions at the changelogs and the documentation, the full implementation to officially support such operating systems is not ready yet.

For Oracle Linux, this will be fixed in the next Uyuni release.

For Ubuntu 20.04, this will be fixed when openSUSE Leap 15.2 (with salt 3000) is the base operating system for the server.

CentOS

When mirroring CentOS AppStreams, only the most up-to-date packages can be synchronized. If a package was previously synchronized it will remain available but old versions cannot be synchronized if they never were earlier.

This will be fixed in the next Uyuni release.

Client Tools Notes

All Client Tools are still considered "Beta" and there could still be dependencies problems, notably for SLE12 and CentOS6 and CentOS7.

URLs of the Client Tools are:

Supported clients

At the moment the status is the following:

Distribution

Salt bootstrap from server

Salt SSH bootstrap from server

Salt bootstrap from client

Traditional

openSUSE Leap 15

SLE12

SLE15

CentOS6

CentOS7

CentOS8

Oracle Linux 6

Oracle Linux 7

Oracle Linux 8

Ubuntu16.04

Ubuntu18.04

Debian9

Debian10

= Working, = Not working, = Untested

In all cases, all maintained SPs and subversions are supported.

Untested clients

Distribution

Salt bootstrap from server

Salt SSH bootstrap from server

Salt bootstrap from client

Traditional

RHEL6

RHEL7

RHEL8

RHEL6, RHEL7 and RHEL8 are expected to work in the same way CentOS6, CentOS7 and CentOS8 respectively. Client Tools repositories for a CentOS version should work at the respective RHEL version.

CentOS8 (and therefore RHEL8) does not have support for the traditional client tools, only salt.

Known limitations

The GPG key for Uyuni Client Tools is not trusted by default by the respective package management tools for each OS.

The systems will bootstrap without the GPG key being trusted, but will not be able to install new client tool packages or updated them.

This can be fixed by adding the key uyuni-gpg-pubkey-0d20833e.key to all the bootscrap scripts at variable ORG_GPG_KEY=. If you already have other keys there, you can keep them.

For systems bootstrapped from WebUI, a salt state should be created to trust the key, then the state can be assigned to the organization, and finally it can be used using an Activation Key and the Configuration Channels to deploy the change to the clients.

Documentation

It is usable but you can still find some issues, such references to SUSE Manager that are scheduled to be fixed on subsequent versions.

Installation

Requirements

  • OS: openSUSE Leap 15.1 x86_64, fully updated

  • Main memory: Minimum 16 GB for base installation

  • Disk space: Minimum 100 GB for root partition, Minimum 50 GB for /var/lib/pgsql, Minimum 50 GB per SUSE product + 100 GB per RHEL product (/var/spacewalk)

See the Getting Started manual for more details on the system requirements.

Installing the Server

Add the Stable repository:

Install the pattern:

zypper in patterns-uyuni_server

Run Yast2 and go to Network Services > Uyuni Setup

Follow the setup assistant.

Update from previous versions of Uyuni Server

You can update from previous Uyuni Server Stable versions.

See the best practices manual for detailed instructions on how to upgrade.

All connected clients will continue to run and are manageable unchanged.

Update from previous versions of Uyuni Proxy

When updating, always start with the server first and then continue with the proxies. See the advanced topics manual for detailed upgrade instructions.

Other information

Red Hat Channels

Managing RHEL clients requires availability of appropriate Red Hat packages.

SUSE Channels

Managing SUSE Linux clients requires availability of appropriate SUSE channels.

Your licensed SUSE products can be used with Uyuni by following the setup Wizard.

Check the manuals for more information.

Providing feedback

In case of encountering a bug please report it at https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/issues

Copyright © 2018 – 2020 The Uyuni Project

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/es/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

For SUSE trademarks, see http://www.suse.com/company/legal/. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Trademark symbols (®, ™ etc.) denote trademarks of SUSE and its affiliates. Asterisks (*) denote third-party trademarks.

All information found in this document has been compiled with utmost attention to detail. However, this does not guarantee complete accuracy. Neither SUSE LLC, its affiliates, the authors nor the translators shall be held liable for possible errors or the consequences thereof.