The checks to clear, the commands for every hop, and what changes in 6.17, 6.18 and 6.19.
Covers Satellite 6.17 to 6.19 Last updated
A printable checklist for upgrading Red Hat Satellite one minor release at a time. It lists the checks that stop an upgrade, every satellite-maintain step for each hop with a log to fill in, and what 6.17, 6.18 and 6.19 remove and add.
For Linux administrators running Satellite 6.17 to 6.19, or its upstream Foreman and Katello.
Most failed Satellite upgrades fail before the upgrade starts. satellite-maintain upgrade check refuses to go on, and the admin meets a requirement for the first time in the maintenance window. The fixes are rarely hard. They just take longer than the window allows.
Satellite upgrades one minor version per hop. So 6.16 to 6.19 is three upgrades. Every hop needs a backup, a clean check and a read of the release notes. The server OS matters too. Satellite 6.17 and later run only on RHEL 9. The last release you can move from RHEL 8 with Leapp is 6.16. A RHEL 8 Satellite has to change OS before the 6.17 hop.
The upgrade check fails on things that have nothing to do with Satellite itself. A shell timeout, a dnf exclude line or an enabled EPEL repository stops it. Hardened builds often trip several of these at once. Paused tasks and old stopped tasks stop it too. So does a VM with less memory than the installer’s tuning profile expects. A CA certificate signed with SHA-1 fails a check that cannot be skipped.
Every hop reruns the installer. It rewrites the files it manages, so a hand edit to one of them is lost. Put edits in installer options or the custom Hiera file instead.
Each release also takes something away. 6.17 dropped Capsule port 8443, so clients still set to it lose their Capsule. 6.19 removed the subscription attach commands from the API and hammer, and scripts that call them break. It also removed the Content Hosts pages and the organization and location overrides on permission filters. The upgrade itself goes fine, and then something else stops working the next morning.
Red Hat plans a 6.20 that runs in containers on RHEL 10. The early release needs a fresh install.
The checklist covers each hop: the checks to clear first, the commands in order, a log to fill in, and what changes in 6.17, 6.18 and 6.19.
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Learn it hands-on
Run Red Hat Satellite 6.19 for RHEL 10 hosts: content views, global registration, remote execution, Ansible, IdM, provisioning, image mode and Capsules. Lab-intensive, with 31 hands-on exercises.
