Installation guide

Chapter 4.
Installation
This chapter describes the initial installation of the RHN Proxy Server. It presumes the prerequisites
listed in Chapter 2 Requirements have been met. However, if you are upgrading to a newer version of
RHN Proxy Server, contact your Red Hat representative for assistance.
4.1. Base Install
The RHN Proxy Server is designed to run on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS operating system.
Therefore, the first phase is to install the base operating system, either from disc, ISO image, or
kickstart. During and after operating system installation, make sure you:
• Allocate plenty of space to the partition that will be used to store packages, according to the
hardware requirements set forth earlier. The default location for cached Red Hat packages is
/var/spool/squid, while custom packages are located in /var/spool/rhn-proxy.
• Install the packages required by RHN Proxy Server and only those packages. You must install only
the base packages as others will cause the RHN Proxy Server installation to fail Refer to Section
2.1 Software Requirements for the method to obtain the correct package group needed for each
version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS.
Important
If you plan to obtain Monitoring-level service, you must install your RHN Proxy Server on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux AS 3 Update 5 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4. These are the only supported
base operating systems for Proxies serving Monitoring-entitled systems.
• Enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) on the Proxy and select the appropriate time zone. All client
systems should already be running the ntpd daemon and be set to the correct time zone.
• Disable the ipchains and iptables services after installation.
4.2. RHN Proxy Server Installation Process
The following instructions describe the RHN Proxy Server installation process:
1. Register the newly installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS system with Red Hat Network (ei-
ther the central RHN Servers or your RHN Satellite Server) using the organizational account
containing the RHN Proxy Server entitlement with the command: up2date --register.
2. Grant the system a Provisioning entitlement by visiting the RHN Website (or the fully qualified
domain name of the Satellite serving the Proxy), logging in as the Organization Administrator,
navigating to the Systems
System Entitlements page, checking the box of system on which
the RHN Proxy Server is to be installed and clicking the Add Provisioning button.
3. Ensure the system is subscribed to the Red Hat Network Tools channel for its base operating
system by clicking the name of the system and navigating to the System System Details
Channels Software subtab. If the Red Hat Network Tools channel is not selected, please
select it and subscribe the system to this channel by clicking on the Change Subscriptions
button.