Red Hat Satellite
Remote Execution
Moustafa Harbi
Senior Technical Account Manager
1
katello-agent • katello-agent was deprecated
in version 6.7
• katello-agent was used for
remote package actions
Deprecation • katello-agent will be removed
from Satellite in 6.15
• Remote Execution Pull
mode has been available
Reminder •
since Satellite 6.12.
Remote Execution in SSH
mode has been available
since before Satellite 6.3.
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Red Hat Satellite
Remote Execution
(REX) Push Mode
Push remote jobs from the
Satellite server for execution on
hosts through SSH.
3
Remote execution: Use cases
▸ Satellite 6.2 allows to run arbitrary commands on clients using SSH
▸ Capsule used to talk with registered clients
▸ Built-in templates
･ Launch arbitrary commands on client/host collection
･ Content management
･ Install/update/delete package/package group
･ Install Errata
･ Set up services
･ Start Puppet agent (deprecated)
4 ･ Shut down/restart client/host collection
Remote execution: settings
• Remote Execution is enabled by default during installation
• By default, remote execution uses root user account on targets
• remote_execution_ssh_user
• SSH public keys can be deployed using kickstart
• <%= snippet 'remote_execution_ssh_keys' %>
• Deploy ssh public key for already registered clients
○ # ssh-copy-id -i ~foreman-proxy/.ssh/id_rsa_foreman_proxy.pub
<root@client.example.com>
○ # curl -k https://satellite.example.com:9090/ssh/pubkey >>
~/.ssh/authorized_keys
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Remote execution:
Remote Execution settings in Satellite GUI
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Administer → Settings → Remote Execution
Remote execution
Running Jobs [1/4]
7 Organization Context → Hosts → All Hosts → Select Hosts →
Select Action → Run Job
Remote execution
Running Jobs [2/4]
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Organization Context → Hosts → All Hosts → Select
Hosts → Select Action → Run Job
Remote execution
Running Jobs [3/4]
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Remote execution
Running Jobs [4/4]
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Job Task → Sub tasks
What’s new in Red Hat Satellite 6.13
Remote
Execution
Enhancing Remote Execution
functionality to simplify host
management
Improvements
11
Remote Execution in 6.11
Install/Remove/Update operations for software
▸ In Satellite 6.11 the recommended Remote Execution method is a push process.
▸ Package update/install/remove operations were run as push operations with REX push.
▸ Katello agent provided pull functionality for update/install/remove operations.
▸ Katello agent is deprecated.
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Remote Execution in 6.12
Pull Mode
▸ In Satellite 6.12 provides an option Remote Execution (REX) Pull.
▸ Clients (hosts) are notified by Satellite infrastructure that there is a
new job to run.
▸ Clients authenticate and securely pull the job and run it.
▸ There is virtually no difference in execution of REX Pull jobs
compared to REX Push
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Remote Execution in 6.13
Improvements
➔ Pull Mode Offline client/host support
◆ If a client or host is offline at the time that a REX job pull mode is
created, the job will be queued to be resent until it is picked up or time
limit is reached
◆ Default time limit is one day.
◆ Default resend time interval is 15 minutes.
➔ Pull Mode Effective user support
◆ “runas” a different user
➔ UI improvements
◆ New guided process for creating jobs
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◆ Updated dashboard
Enabling Pull Mode
• On the Satellite server, enable pull-based transport.
• # satellite-installer --foreman-proxy-plugin-remote-execution-script-mode pull-mqtt
• Open port 1883 to allow MQTT through the firewall.
• # firewall-cmd --add-port="1883/tcp"
• # firewall-cmd --runtime-to-permanent
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Enabling Pull Mode
In Satellite, click on “Administer” à “Settings”.
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Enabling Pull Mode
Click on the “Content” tab.
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Enabling Pull Mode
Finally, set the attribute “Prefer registered through Capsule for remote execution” to Yes. (Only If you’ve capsules)
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Enabling Pull Mode
• Install the katello-pull-transport-migrate package on your host.
• On RHEL 8/9 hosts:
• # dnf install katello-pull-transport-migrate
• On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 hosts:
• # yum install katello-pull-transport-migrate
• verify that the pull client is running and configured properly
• # systemctl status yggdrasild
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Remote Execution Pull Mode Improvements
Remote Execution UI
Improvements
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