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Content views, activation keys, and backing up Foreman

Content views​

Create content view​

hammer content-view create --name "CentOS 7 Content"

Add repos to content view​

for i in $(seq 1 4); do \
  hammer content-view add-repository \
  --name "CentOS 7 Content" \
  --product "CentOS 7" \
  --repository-id "$i"; \
  done

Create lifecycle environment​

hammer lifecycle-environment create --name "stable" --label "stable" --prior "Library"

Publish content view​

hammer content-view publish --name "CentOS 7 Content"
note

It may take a bit to publish the content view.

Promote version to lifecycle environment​

hammer content-view version promote --content-view "CentOS 7 Content" --version "1.0" --to-lifecycle-environment "stable"

Activation keys​

Create an activation key​

hammer activation-key create --name "centos7-key" --description "Key to use with CentOS 7" --lifecycle-environment "stable" --content-view "CentOS 7 Content" --unlimited-hosts

Add subscription to activation key​

hammer activation-key add-subscription --name "centos7-key" --quantity "1" --subscription-id "1"

Backup database​

caution

Ensure the user postgres has write access to the backup directory.

Create backup directory​

sudo mkdir /var/foreman-backup

Ensure postgres has write access to the backup directory​

sudo chown -R postgres /var/foreman-backup
sudo chgrp postgres /var/foreman-backup

While changing the group is specified here, the file permissions only need to be changed for the user postgres.

Backup Foreman​

sudo foreman-maintain backup offline /var/foreman-backup

Troubleshooting​

Could not publish the content view: 500 Internal error​

This can be caused when running yum update, but not also running foreman-installer --scenario katello --update. Run the following:

sudo foreman-installer --scenario katello --update

Candlepin fails​

Memory​

It's possible it is cased by not having enough memory. As such Candlepin will be one of the first services to fail. It is recommended to increase the total amount of memory for the foreman server.

View how to do this can be found on the "expanding memory" section here.

Java​

Candlepin can fail seemingly randomly due to an error with Java. According to a community thread, the workaround is to install an older version of Java:

wget http://vault.centos.org/7.6.1810/updates/x86_64/Packages/java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless-1.8.0.222.b10-0.el7_6.x86_64.rpm
wget http://vault.centos.org/7.6.1810/updates/x86_64/Packages/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.222.b10-0.el7_6.x86_64.rpm

yum downgrade java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.222.b10-0.el7_6.x86_64.rpm java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless-1.8.0.222.b10-0.el7_6.x86_64.rpm