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. For Oracle Linux 7, only packages for the x86_64 architecture are provided.

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 1.2.2, “Configuring Software Channels by Using the Oracle Linux Yum Server”.

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 Oracle Linux yum server 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.
  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_spacewalk22_client repository.
  Alternatively, you can create a /etc/yum.repos.d/spacewalk22-client.repo file with the following content:
```
[ol6_spacewalk22_client]
name=Spacewalk Client 2.2 for Oracle Linux 6 ($basearch)
baseurl=https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/spacewalk22/client/$basearch/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
```
- Oracle Linux 5: enable the ol5_spacewalk22_client repository.
  Alternatively, you can create a /etc/yum.repos.d/spacewalk22-client.repo file with the following content:
```
[ol5_spacewalk22_client]
name=Spacewalk Client 2.2 for Oracle Linux 5 ($basearch)
baseurl=https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL5/spacewalk22/client/$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 1.2.4, “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
```
Disable access to the Spacewalk Client repository.
Disable Spacewalk Client repository in the yum epository configuration file or delete your Spacewalk Client .repo file.

Note

Starting with Oracle Linux 7 Update 1 and Oracle Linux 6 Update 7, you do not need to install the Spacewalk client before registering a system with a Spacewalk server. Download the CA certificate file from http://spacewalk_server/pub/RHN-ORG-TRUSTED-SSL-CERT on the Spacewalk server to /usr/share/rhn/RHN-ORG-TRUSTED-SSL-CERT and use the --sslCACert option to specify the certificate in addition to the activation key and Spacewalk server URL to the rhnreg_ks command:

# rhnreg_ks --serverUrl=http://spacewalk_server/XMLRPC \
  --sslCACert=/usr/share/rhn/RHN-ORG-TRUSTED-SSL-CERT \
  --activationkey=activation_key

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.