Upgrading and Updating Foreman

Upgrade Foreman server and all Smart Proxy servers to Foreman 2.5. For more information, see Upgrading Foreman server.

Upgrade to https://yum.theforeman.org/client/2.5/ on all Foreman clients. For more information, see Upgrading Foreman Clients.

If you want to have several smaller outage windows instead of one larger window.

If Smart Proxies in your organization are managed by several teams and are located in different locations.

If you use a load-balanced configuration, you can upgrade one load-balanced Smart Proxy and keep other load-balanced Smart Proxies at 1 version lower. This allows you to upgrade all Smart Proxies one after another without any outage.

Create a backup.

Regenerate certificates. On the main Foreman/Katello server:

# foreman-proxy-certs-generate --foreman-proxy-fqdn "myproxy.example.com" \
                       --certs-update-all \
                       --certs-tar    "~/myproxy.example.com-certs.tar"

Copy the resulting tarball to your Smart Proxy, for this example we will use /root/myproxy.example.com-certs.tar

Update repositories for EL7

# yum update -y https://yum.theforeman.org/katello/4.1/katello/el7/x86_64/katello-repos-latest.rpm \
                https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/2.5/el7/x86_64/foreman-release.rpm

Update repositories for EL8

# yum update -y https://yum.theforeman.org/katello/4.1/katello/el8/x86_64/katello-repos-latest.rpm \
                https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/2.5/el8/x86_64/foreman-release.rpm

Clean yum cache:

# yum clean metadata

Update Packages:

# yum update -y

Run the installer:

# foreman-installer --certs-tar-file /root/myproxy.example.com-certs.tar \
                  --certs-update-all --certs-regenerate true --certs-deploy true

If you have migrated content from Pulp 2 to Pulp 3, remove all Pulp 2 content.

# foreman-maintain content remove-pulp2

Check when the kernel packages were last updated:

# rpm -qa --last | grep kernel

Optional: If a kernel update occurred since the last reboot, reboot the system:

# reboot

Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration files, check and restore any changes required to the DNS and DHCP configuration files using the backups made earlier.

Optional: If you use custom repositories, ensure that you enable these custom repositories after the upgrade completes.

On Foreman server, perform a complete synchronization of the upgraded Smart Proxy as the MongoDB and RPM repositories are not automatically migrated with Foreman.

# hammer capsule content synchronize --name ${Smart Proxy} --skip-metadata-check true --async

Create a backup.

Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration in the /etc/zones.conf or /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf files, back up the configuration files because the installer only supports one domain or subnet, and therefore restoring changes from these backups might be required.

Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration files and do not want to overwrite the changes, enter the following command:

# {foreman-installer} --foreman-proxy-dns-managed=false \
--foreman-proxy-dhcp-managed=false

In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Monitor > Jobs.

Click Run Job.

From the Job category list, select Maintenance Operations.

From the Job template list, select Capsule Upgrade Playbook.

In the Search Query field, enter the host name of the Smart Proxy.

Ensure that Resolves to shows 1 host.

In the target_version field, enter the target version of the Smart Proxy.

In the whitelist_options field, enter the whitelist options.

For Type of query, click Static Query or Dynamic Query depending on the type of query.

Select the schedule for the job execution in Schedule.

In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Smart Proxies.

Click on the name of Smart Proxy server you wish to synchronize.

Click Synchronize.

Select Complete Sync.

In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Hosts > Content Hosts and select the Content Hosts that you want to upgrade.

From the Select Action list, select Manage Repository Sets.

From the Repository Sets Management list, select the Foreman Tools 2.4 check box.

From the Select Action list, select Override to Disabled, and click Done.

When the process completes, on the same set of hosts from the previous steps, from the Select Action list, select Manage Repository Sets.

From the Repository Sets Management list, select the Red Hat https://yum.theforeman.org/client/2.5/ check box.

From the Select Action list, select Override to Enabled, and click Done.

When the process completes, on the same set of hosts from the previous steps, from the Select Action list, select Manage Packages.

In the Package search field, enter one of the following options depending on your configuration:

From the Update list, you must select the via remote execution option. This is required because if you update the package using the Katello agent, the package update disrupts the communication between the client and Foreman or Smart Proxy server, which causes the update to fail. For more information, see Configuring and Setting Up Remote Jobs in the Managing Hosts guide.

Log into the client system.

Disable the repositories for the previous version of Foreman.

# subscription-manager repos \
--disable rhel-7-server-satellite-tools-2.4-rpms

Enable the https://yum.theforeman.org/client/2.5/ repository for this version of Foreman.

# subscription-manager repos \
--enable=https://yum.theforeman.org/client/2.5/el7/x86_64/foreman-client-release.rpm

Depending on your configuration, complete one of the following steps:

Upgrade virt-who.

# yum upgrade virt-who

Restart the virt-who service so the new version is activated.

# systemctl restart virt-who.service

In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Content > Red Hat Repositories.

In the Enabled Repositories area, locate Foreman Tools 2.4 for RHEL 7 Server RPMs x86_64.

Click the Disable icon to the right.

Stop all services, except for the postgresql service:

# foreman-maintain service stop --exclude postgresql

Switch to the postgres user and reclaim space on the database:

# su - postgres -c 'vacuumdb --full --dbname=foreman'

Start the other services when the vacuum completes:

# foreman-maintain service start

Confirm that the files exist in the /var/lib/pgsql/ directory:

# ls -l /var/lib/pgsql/

# du -sh /var/lib/pgsql/

Delete the data from the /var/lib/pgsql/ directory:

# rm -rf /var/lib/pgsql/*

The default tuning profile defined in the /usr/share/foreman-installer/config/foreman.hiera/tuning/common.yaml file

The tuning profile that you want to apply to your deployment and is defined in the /usr/share/foreman-installer/config/foreman.hiera/tuning/sizes/ directory

Optional: If you have configured a /etc/foreman-installer/custom-hiera.yaml file, Foreman applies these configuration settings.

Optional: If you have configured the custom-hiera.yaml file on Foreman server, back up the /etc/foreman-installer/custom-hiera.yaml file to custom-hiera.original. You can use the backup file to restore the /etc/foreman-installer/custom-hiera.yaml file to its original state if it becomes corrupted:

# cp /etc/foreman-installer/custom-hiera.yaml \
/etc/foreman-installer/custom-hiera.original

Optional: If you have configured the custom-hiera.yaml file on Foreman server, review the definitions of the default tuning profile in /usr/share/foreman-installer/config/foreman.hiera/tuning/common.yaml and the tuning profile that you want to apply in /usr/share/foreman-installer/config/foreman.hiera/tuning/sizes/. Compare the configuration entries against the entries in your /etc/foreman-installer/custom-hiera.yaml file and remove any duplicated configuration settings in your /etc/foreman-installer/custom-hiera.yaml file.

Enter the foreman-installer command with the --tuning option for the profile that you want to apply. For example, to apply the medium tuning profile settings, enter the following command:

# foreman-installer --tuning medium

To view the Puppet environments, open the /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments file.

# vim /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments

If any of the puppet environments are missing, copy them back from the Foreman server or the backup taken prior to upgrade.

Ensure to have the right permissions and ownership of the missing contents inside the /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/ file after they have been restored back.

Save and close the file.

Ensure the Foreman Maintenance repository is enabled:

# subscription-manager repos --enable \
rhel-7-server-satellite-maintenance-6-rpms

Check the available versions to confirm the next minor version is listed:

# foreman-maintain upgrade list-versions

Use the health check option to determine if the system is ready for upgrade. On first use of this command, foreman-maintain prompts you to enter the hammer admin user credentials and saves them in the /etc/foreman-maintain/foreman-maintain-hammer.yml file.

# foreman-maintain upgrade check --target-version 6.10.z

Because of the lengthy update time, use a utility such as screen to suspend and reattach a communication session. You can then check the upgrade progress without staying connected to the command shell continuously. For more information about using the screen command, see How do I use the screen command? article in the Red Hat Knowledge Base.

Perform the upgrade:

# foreman-maintain upgrade run --target-version 6.10.z

Check when the kernel packages were last updated:

# rpm -qa --last | grep kernel

Optional: If a kernel update occurred since the last reboot, stop the foreman-maintain services and reboot the system:

# foreman-maintain service stop
# reboot