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Chapter 6. Importing and Synchronizing
Important
To populate custom channels correctly, you must first populate at least one Red Hat base
channel. The
RHN Satellite Synchronization Tool
creates the necessary directory struc-
tures and permissions; without these, the custom channel tools will not work properly. For
this reason, you should use these instructions to set up your base channel(s) and then
refer to the
RHN Channel Management Guide
for steps to establish custom channels.
To perform the RHN Satellite Server import, the following prerequisites must be met:
•
The RHN Satellite Server installation must have been performed successfully.
•
The Red Hat Network Channel Content ISOs or
RHN Satellite Exporter
data must be
available, or the Satellite must have access to the Internet and the RHN website.
Although it is possible to conduct the import directly from the RHN website, this should
be done only if Channel Content ISOs are not available. It takes a long time to populate a
channel from scratch over the Internet. For this reason, Red Hat urges you to use ISOs, if
they are available, for initial import.
6.2.1.
satellite-sync
The
RHN Satellite Synchronization Tool
enables an RHN Satellite Server to update its
database metadata and RPM packages with those of RHN’s central servers, another Satel-
lite within your organization, or local media. To launch it, execute the following command
as root:
satellite-sync
This tool can be used in a a closed environment, such as the one created with a disconnected
install, or it may obtain data directly over the Internet. Closed environment imports can
get their data from downloaded ISOs or from the XML data generated by
RHN Satellite
Exporter
.
The
RHN Satellite Synchronization Tool
works incrementally, or in steps. For it to ob-
tain Errata information, it must first know the packages contained. For the packages to be
updated, the tool must first identify the associated channel(s). For this reason, the
RHN
Satellite Synchronization Tool
performs its actions in the following order:
1.
channel-families
— Import/synchronize channel family (architecture) data.
2.
channels
— Import/synchronize channel data.
3.
rpms
— Import/synchronize RPMs.
4.
packages
— Import/synchronize full package data for those RPMs retrieved suc-
cessfully.
