1.3 Installing the Spacewalk Client and Registering Servers

The software described in this documentation is either no longer supported or is in extended support.
Oracle recommends that you upgrade to a current supported release.

1.3 Installing the Spacewalk Client and Registering Servers

Oracle supports only Oracle Linux servers as Spacewalk clients. You can use Spacewalk to manage Fedora-based clients and other systems by using upstream client binaries and repositories but Oracle does not provide support for these clients.

Oracle provides Spacewalk client packages for Oracle Linux 5 and 6 for both i386 and x86_64 architectures.

If the Spacewalk Client channel provided by Oracle is mirrored on the Spacewalk server, the Spacewalk client is installed automatically on servers that are provisioned from Spacewalk. The Spacewalk Client channel can be configured using the spacewalk-common-channels command, as described in Section 1.2.6, “Configuring Software Channels by Using the Oracle Linux Yum Server”.

Starting with Oracle Linux 7 Update 1, you do not need to install the Spacewalk client before registering a system with a Spacewalk server. You can simply register the system using the rhnreg_ks command. If you do this, Oracle recommends installing the full Spacewalk Client after registration to support all of the features provided by Spacewalk, which include provisioning and auditing.

For an Oracle Linux server that is not yet connected to Spacewalk, you install the Spacewalk client and register the server, as follows:

Enable access to the Spacewalk Client repository.
Download the latest the yum repository configuration file from https://yum.oracle.com/ and save it to the yum repositories directory (by default /etc/yum.repos.d). Edit the configuration file and enable the repository:
- Oracle Linux 7: enable the ol7_spacewalk22_client repository.
  Note
  For Oracle Linux 7, you must use the Spacewalk 2.2 client to connect to a Spacewalk 2.0 server.
  Alternatively, you can create a /etc/yum.repos.d/spacewalk22-client.repo file with the following content:
```
[ol7_spacewalk22_client]
name=Spacewalk Client 2.2 for Oracle Linux 7 ($basearch)
baseurl=https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/spacewalk22/client/$basearch/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
```
- Oracle Linux 6: enable the ol6_spacewalk20_client repository.
  Alternatively, you can create a /etc/yum.repos.d/spacewalk20-client.repo file with the following content:
```
[ol6_spacewalk20_client]
name=Spacewalk Client 2.0 for Oracle Linux 6 ($basearch)
baseurl=https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/spacewalk20/client/$basearch/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
```
- Oracle Linux 5: enable the ol5_spacewalk20_client repository.
  Alternatively, you can create a /etc/yum.repos.d/spacewalk20-client.repo file with the following content:
```
[ol5_spacewalk20_client]
name=Spacewalk Client 2.0 for Oracle Linux 5 ($basearch)
baseurl=https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL5/spacewalk20/client/$basearch/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
```
(Oracle Linux 5 only) Remove the pirut, up2date, and up2date-gnome packages.
Use the rpm -e --nodeps command to remove these packages.
In your Oracle Linux 5 Kickstart profiles in Spacewalk, exclude these packages from installation by inserting a dash character (-) in front of the package name in the Kickstart profile on the Software, Package Group screen, for example:
```
@Base
-pirut
-up2date
-up2date-gnome
```
Install the Spacewalk client.
Use the following command to install the Spacewalk client on all platforms:
```
# yum install rhn-client-tools rhn-check rhn-setup rhnsd m2crypto yum-rhn-plugin
```
This command replaces the existing packages and deletes a registered server from ULN.
Register the server with Spacewalk using the rhnreg_ks command.
Before you can register a server, you must have already created a client activation key, as described in Section 1.2.9, “Creating Activation Keys for Spacewalk Clients”. If enabled, a universal default key can be used. However, using a specific activation key is better.
```
# rhnreg_ks --serverUrl=http://spacewalk_server/XMLRPC --activationkey=activation_key
```
For Oracle Linux 7 Update 1 and later systems that do not have the Spacewalk Client installed, you must provide a user name that is authorized to register the system and the user's password in plain text, in addition to the activation key:
```
# rhnreg_ks --serverUrl=http://spacewalk_server/XMLRPC --username=user \
  --password=passwd  --activationkey=activation_key
```
Disable access to the Spacewalk Client repository.
Disable Spacewalk Client repository in the yum repository configuration file, or delete your Spacewalk Client .repo file.