SUSE Manager Server Setup

This section covers SUSE Manager Server setup, using these procedures:

  • Start SUSE Manager setup with YaST

  • Create the main administration account with the SUSE Manager Web UI

  • Name your base organization and add login credentials

  • Synchronize the SUSE Linux Enterprise product channel from SUSE Customer Center

Third Party Software

SUSE Manager is part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise 4.0 product family and thus compatible with the software shipped with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

SUSE Manager is a complex system, and therefore installing third party software is not allowed. Installing monitoring software provided by a third party vendor is allowed only if you do not exchange basic libraries such as SSL, cryptographic software, and similar tools. As part of providing product support, SUSE reserves the right to ask to remove any third party software (and associated configuration changes) and then to reproduce the problem on a clean system.

Set up SUSE Manager with YaST

This section will guide you through SUSE Manager setup procedures.

Procedure: SUSE Manager Setup

  1. Log in to the SUSE Manager Server and type yast2 susemanager_setup to begin the setup.

  1. From the introduction screen select SUSE Manager Setup  Setup SUSE Manager from scratch and click Next to continue.

  2. Enter an email address to receive status notifications and click Next to continue. SUSE Manager can sometimes send a large volume of notification emails. You can disable email notifications in the Web UI after setup, if you need to.

  3. Enter your certificate information and a password. Passwords must be at at least seven characters in length, and must not contain spaces, single or double quotation marks (' or "), exclamation marks (!), or dollar signs ($). Always store your passwords in a secure location.

    Certificate Password

    Without this password it will not be possible to set up a SUSE Manager Proxy Server.

  4. Click Next to continue.

    quickstart mgr setup4 ncurses

  5. From the SUSE Manager Setup  Database Settings screen, enter a database user and password and click Next to continue. Passwords must be at at least seven characters in length, and must not contain spaces, single or double quotation marks (' or "), exclamation marks (!), or dollar signs ($). Always store your passwords in a secure location.

    quickstart mgr setup5 ncurses

  6. Click Next to continue.

  7. Click Yes to run setup when prompted.

  8. When setup is complete, click Next to continue. You will see the address of the SUSE Manager Web UI.

  9. Click Finish to complete SUSE Manager setup.

Creating the Main Administration Account

This section will walk you through creating your organizations main administration account for SUSE Manager.

Admin and User Accounts

The main administration account is the highest authority account within SUSE Manager and therefore account access information should be stored in a secure location.

For security it is recommended that the main administrator creates low level admin accounts designated for administration of organizations and individual groups.
Procedure: Setting Up the Main Administration Account

  1. In the browser, enter the address provided after completing setup. With this address you open the SUSE Manager Web UI.

  2. In the Web UI, navigate to the Create Organization  Organization Name field and enter your organization name.

  3. In the Create Organization  Desired Login and Create Organization  Desired Password fields, enter your username and password.

  4. Fill in the Account Information fields including an email for system notifications.

  5. Click Create Organization to finish creating your administration account.

    quickstart mgr setup admin1

You are now presented with the SUSE Manager Home  Overview page.

Synchronizing Products from SUSE Customer Center

SUSE Customer Center (SCC) maintains a collection of repositories which contain packages, software and updates for all supported enterprise client systems. These repositories are organized into channels each of which provide software specific to a distribution, release, and architecture. After synchronizing with SCC clients may receive updates, and be organized into groups and assigned to specific product software channels.

This section covers synchronizing with SCC from the Web UI and adding your first client channel.

Before you can synchronize software repositories with SCC, you will need to enter organization credentials in SUSE Manager. In previous versions, so-called mirror credentials were used instead. The organization credentials give you access to the SUSE product downloads. You will find your organization credentials in https://scc.suse.com/organization.

Enter your organization credentials in the SUSE Manager Web UI:

Procedure: Entering Organization Credentials

  1. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, select Main Menu  Admin  Setup Wizard.

  2. From the Setup Wizard page select the Organization Credentials tab.

  3. Click Add a new credential.

  4. In the dialog, enter Username and Password, and confirm with Save.

When the credentials are confirmed with a check-mark icon, proceed with Procedure: Synchronizing with SUSE Customer Center.

Procedure: Synchronizing with SUSE Customer Center

  1. In the Web UI, navigate to Admin  Setup Wizard.

  2. From the Setup Wizard page select the SUSE Products tab. Wait a moment for the products list to populate. If you previously registered with SUSE Customer Center a list of products will populate the table. This table lists architecture, channels, and status information. For more information, see Wizard.

    admin suse products

  3. If your SUSE Linux Enterprise client is based on x86_64 architecture scroll down the page and select the check box for this channel now.

    • Add channels to SUSE Manager by selecting the check box to the left of each channel. Click the arrow symbol to the left of the description to unfold a product and list available modules.

    • Click Add Products to start product synchronization.

After adding the channel, SUSE Manager will schedule the channel to be synchronized. This can take a long time as SUSE Manager will copy channel software sources from the SUSE repositories located at SUSE Customer Center to local /var/spacewalk/ directory of your server.

PostgreSQL and Transparent Huge Pages

In some environments, Transparent Huge Pages provided by the kernel may slow down PostgreSQL workloads significantly.

To disable Transparant Huge Pages set the transparent_hugepage kernel parameter to never. This has to be changed in /etc/default/grub and added to the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, for example:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="resume=/dev/sda1 splash=silent quiet showopts elevator=noop transparent_hugepage=never"

To write the new configuration run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg. To update the grub2 during boot run grub2-install /dev/sda.

Monitor the channel synchronization process in real-time by viewing channel log files located in the directory /var/log/rhn/reposync:

tail -f /var/log/rhn/reposync/<CHANNEL_NAME>.log

When the channel synchronization process is complete, you can continue with client registration. For more instructions, see .