Quick start guide for Foreman on Debian/Ubuntu

The Foreman installer is a collection of Puppet modules that installs everything required for a full working Foreman setup. It uses native operating system packaging (.rpm or .deb packages) and adds necessary configuration for the complete installation.

Components include the Foreman web UI, Smart Proxy, a Puppet server, TFTP, DNS and DHCP servers. It is configurable and the Puppet modules can be read or run in "no-op" mode to see what changes it will make.

1. Supported operating systems

The following operating systems are supported by the installer, have packages, and are tested for deploying Foreman:

Table 1. Operating systems supported by foreman-installer
Operating System	Architecture	Notes
Debian 11 (Bullseye)	amd64
Debian 12 (Bookworm)	amd64
Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy)	amd64

Foreman community advises against using an existing system because the Foreman installer will affect the configuration of several components.

The installation requires 4 GB of memory. For more information, see System Requirements.

The Foreman installer uses Puppet to install Foreman. This guide assumes that you have a newly installed operating system, on which the installer will setup Foreman, a Puppet server, and the Smart Proxy by default.

2. Configuring repositories

Procedure

Debian 11 (Bullseye)
Debian 12 (Bookworm)
Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy)

Install the wget and ca-certificates packages:
```
# apt install wget ca-certificates
```

Change directory to /tmp and retrieve the puppet-release package.

For Puppet 8:

# cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet8-release-bullseye.deb

For Puppet 7:

# cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet7-release-bullseye.deb

Install the puppet-release package.

For Puppet 8:

# apt install /tmp/puppet8-release-bullseye.deb

For Puppet 7:

# apt install /tmp/puppet7-release-bullseye.deb

Enable the Foreman repository:

# wget https://deb.theforeman.org/foreman.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/foreman.asc
# echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ bullseye 3.13" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
# echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ plugins 3.13" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list

Install the wget and ca-certificates packages:
```
# apt install wget ca-certificates
```

Change directory to /tmp and retrieve the puppet-release package.

For Puppet 8:

# cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet8-release-bookworm.deb

For Puppet 7:

# cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet7-release-bookworm.deb

Install the puppet-release package.

For Puppet 8:

# apt install /tmp/puppet8-release-bookworm.deb

For Puppet 7:

# apt install /tmp/puppet7-release-bookworm.deb

Enable the Foreman repository:

# wget https://deb.theforeman.org/foreman.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/foreman.asc
# echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ bookworm 3.13" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
# echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ plugins 3.13" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list

Install the wget and ca-certificates packages:
```
# apt install wget ca-certificates
```

Change directory to /tmp and retrieve the puppet-release package.

For Puppet 8:

# cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet8-release-jammy.deb

For Puppet 7:

# cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet7-release-jammy.deb

Install the puppet-release package.

For Puppet 8:

# apt install /tmp/puppet8-release-jammy.deb

For Puppet 7:

# apt install /tmp/puppet7-release-jammy.deb

Enable the Foreman repository:

# wget https://deb.theforeman.org/foreman.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/foreman.asc
# echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ jammy 3.13" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
# echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ plugins 3.13" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list

3. Installing Foreman server packages

Procedure

Update package lists:
```
# apt update
```
Update all packages:
```
# apt upgrade
```
Install foreman-installer:
```
# apt install foreman-installer
```

4. Running the Foreman installer

The installation run is non-interactive, but the configuration can be customized by supplying any of the options listed in foreman-installer --help, or by running foreman-installer -i for interactive mode. More examples are described in the Installation Options section. The -v option disables the progress bar and displays all changes.

Procedure

Run the following command:
```
# foreman-installer
```

The script displays its progress and writes logs to /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman.log.