Chapter 2. Client Applications
Most of the enterprise-class features of Red Hat Network have required changes to the Red Hat Network client applications themselves. Of course, it's difficult to get the latest versions of these applications until the systems are registered with Red Hat Network. This sort of chicken-and-egg problem is especially problematic for customers who want to migrate large numbers of older systems to Red Hat Network. This chapter identifies techniques that may be used to resolve this dilemma.
 | Important |
|---|---|
Red Hat strongly recommends that clients connected to RHN Proxy Server or RHN Satellite Server be running the latest update of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to ensure proper connectivity. |
2.1. Deploying the Latest Red Hat Network Client RPMs
Since Red Hat Update Agent (up2date) and Red Hat Network Registration Client (rhn_register) are prerequisites for using much of Red Hat Network's enterprise functionality, it's crucial to install them before trying to use RHN Proxy Server or RHN Satellite Server in your environment.
There are several sensible approaches to doing this, but they are all similar; each involves storing the RPMs somewhere that is accessible by all client systems and deploying the packages with the simplest command possible. This command will vary from organization to organization.
Remember, only systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 need to use the Red Hat Network Registration Client to register with RHN. Systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and later can use the registration functionality built into the Red Hat Update Agent.
This document presumes that the customer has installed RHN Satellite Server and/or RHN Proxy Server on the customer network. With either server type, the latest versions of both up2date and rhn_register should have been downloaded and installed to the RHN Satellite Server or RHN Proxy Server itself, as part of the importing process used to get the package repository populated and up-to-date. Known working versions of both applications are placed in the /var/www/html/pub/ directory of the Proxy or Satellite.
Confirm the precise paths of the client packages before running the following command, as they may not reside in the top-level /pub directory but instead in its subdirectories. When run from a client, this command would then install these RPMs to that client, assuming the domain name, paths, and RPM versions are correct:
rpm -Uvh \ http://your_proxy_or_sat.your_domain.com/pub/rhn_register-2.8.27-1.7.3.i386.rpm \ http://your_proxy_or_sat.your_domain.com/pub/rhn_register-gnome-2.8.27-1.7.3.i386.rpm \ http://your_proxy_or_sat.your_domain.com/pub/up2date-3.0.7-1.i386.rpm \ http://your_proxy_or_sat.your_domain.com/pub/up2date-gnome-3.0.7-1.i386.rpm |
Note the inclusion of the associated gnome RPMs. Keep in mind, the architecture (in this case, i386) may need to be altered depending on the systems to be served.