Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE SERVER 3.7, Installation Manual

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Chapter 8.
Maintenance
Because of the RHN Satellite Server’s unique closed environment, its users are provided with abilities
not available to any other Red Hat Network customers. In addition, the Satellite itself will also require
maintenance. This chapter discusses the procedures that should be followed to carry out administrative
functions outside of standard use, as well as apply patches to the RHN Satellite Server.
8.1. Managing the Satellite Service
Since the RHN Satellite Server consists of a multitude of individual components, Red Hat provides
a master service that allows you to stop, start, or retrieve status from the various services in the
appropriate order:
rhn-satellite
. This helper service accepts all of the typical commands:
service rhn-satellite start
service rhn-satellite stop
service rhn-satellite restart
service rhn-satellite status
Use the
rhn-satellite
service to shut down and bring up the entire RHN Satellite Server and
retrieve status messages from all of its services at once.
8.2. Updating the Satellite
If any critical updates are made to RHN Satellite Server, they will be released in the form of an Errata
for the RHN Satellite Server.
For RHN Satellite Server systems that may be connected to the Internet, the best method for applying
these Errata Updates is using the
Red Hat Update Agent
via Red Hat Network. Since the RHN
Satellite Server is subscribed to Red Hat Network during initial installation, the user should be able
to run
up2date -u
on the RHN Satellite Server or use the website at https://rhn.redhat.com to apply
the updates.
Important
Apache RPMs do not restart the httpd service upon installation. Therefore, after conducting a full
update of an RHN Satellite Server (such as with the command up2date -uf), Apache may fail. To
avoid this, make sure you restart the httpd service after upgrading it.
For RHN Satellite Server systems that may not be connected to the Internet, the packages themselves
may be retrieved using a customer account at https://rhn.redhat.com. Then, they can be applied man-
ually by the customer according to instructions in the Errata Advisory.
Warning
It is
very
important to read the Errata Advisory before applying any RHN Satellite Server Errata Up-
dates. Additional configuration steps may be required to apply certain RHN Satellite Server updates,
especially if they involve the database. In such cases, the advisory will contain specific and detailed
information about necessary steps that may be required.