In this guide, the terms upgrade, update, and migrate have the following meanings:

Upgrading

The process of advancing your Foreman server and Smart Proxy server installations from a y-stream release to the next, for example Foreman 3.2 to Foreman 3.3. For more information, see Upgrading Overview.

Updating

The process of advancing your Foreman server and Smart Proxy server installations from a z-stream release to the next, for example Foreman 3.3.0 to Foreman 3.3.1. For more information, see Updating Foreman server and Content Hosts.

Migrating

The process of moving an existing Foreman installation to a new instance. For more information, see Migrating Foreman to a New Enterprise Linux System.

1. Upgrading Overview

Review prerequisites and available upgrade paths below before upgrading your current Foreman installation to Foreman 3.3.

Note that you can upgrade Smart Proxies separately from Foreman. For more information, see Upgrading Smart Proxies Separately from Foreman.

1.1. Prerequisites

Upgrading to Foreman 3.3 affects your entire Foreman infrastructure. Before proceeding, complete the following:

  • Read the Foreman 3.3 Release Notes.

  • Plan your upgrade path. For more information, see Upgrade Paths.

  • Plan for the required downtime. Foreman services are shut down during the upgrade. The upgrade process duration might vary depending on your hardware configuration, network speed, and the amount of data that is stored on the server.

    Upgrading Foreman takes approximately 1 – 2 hours.

    Upgrading Smart Proxy takes approximately 10 – 30 minutes.

  • Ensure that you have sufficient storage space on your server. For more information, see Preparing your Environment for Installation in Installing Foreman 3.3 Server on RHEL/CentOS and Preparing your Environment for Installation in Installing an External Smart Proxy Server 3.3.

  • Back up your Foreman server and all Smart Proxy servers. For more information, see Backing Up Foreman server and Smart Proxy server in Administering Foreman.

  • Plan for updating any scripts you use that contain Foreman API commands because some API commands differ between versions of Foreman.

Warning
 If you customize configuration files, manually or using a tool such as Hiera, these changes are overwritten when the installation script runs during upgrading or updating. You can use the --noop option with the foreman-installer script to test for changes.

1.2. Upgrade Paths

You can upgrade to Foreman 3.3 from Foreman 3.2.

Foreman servers and Smart Proxy servers on earlier versions must first be upgraded to Foreman 3.2. For more information, see the Foreman 3.2 Upgrade documentation.

High-Level Upgrade Steps

The high-level steps in upgrading Foreman to 3.3 are as follows:

  1. Upgrade Foreman server to 3.3. For more information, see Upgrading Foreman server.

  2. Upgrade all Smart Proxy servers to 3.3. For more information, see Upgrading Smart Proxy Servers.

  3. Optional: After you upgrade your Foreman, you can also upgrade the operating system on your Foreman servers and Smart Proxies to Enterprise Linux 8. There are two ways of upgrading your OS:

  4. Continue with Performing Post-Upgrade Tasks.

1.3. Following the Progress of the Upgrade

Because of the lengthy upgrade time, use a utility such as tmux 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, see the tmux manual page.

If you lose connection to the command shell where the upgrade command is running you can see the logs in /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman.log to check if the process completed successfully.

1.4. Upgrading Smart Proxies Separately from Foreman

You can upgrade Foreman to version 3.3 and keep Smart Proxies at version 3.2 until you have the capacity to upgrade them too.

All the functionality that worked previously works on 3.2 Smart Proxies. However, the functionality added in the 3.3 release will not work until you upgrade Smart Proxies to 3.3.

Upgrading Smart Proxies after upgrading Foreman can be useful in the following example scenarios:

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

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

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

2. Upgrading Foreman

Use the following procedures to upgrade your existing Foreman to Foreman 3.3:

  1. Review Prerequisites.

  2. Upgrading Foreman server

  3. Upgrading Smart Proxy Servers

  4. Performing Post-Upgrade Tasks

2.1. Upgrading Foreman server

This section describes how to upgrade Foreman server from 3.2 to 3.3. You can upgrade from any minor version of Foreman server 3.2.

Before You Begin

  • Note that you can upgrade Smart Proxies separately from Foreman. For more information, see Upgrading Smart Proxies Separately from Foreman.

  • Review and update your firewall configuration prior to upgrading your Foreman server. For more information, see Preparing your environment for installation in Installing Foreman 3.3 Server on RHEL/CentOS.

  • If you have edited any of the default job or provisioning templates, back up the files either by cloning or exporting them. Cloning is the recommended method because that prevents them being overwritten in future updates or upgrades. To confirm if a template has been edited, you can view its History before you upgrade or view the changes in the audit log after an upgrade. In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Monitor > Audits and search for the template to see a record of changes made. If you use the export method, restore your changes by comparing the exported template and the default template, manually applying your changes.

Smart Proxy Considerations

  • Note that Foreman server upgraded from 3.2 to 3.3 can use Smart Proxy servers still at 3.2.

FIPS mode

You cannot upgrade Foreman server from a RHEL base system that is not operating in FIPS mode to a RHEL base system that is operating in FIPS mode.

To run Foreman server on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux base system operating in FIPS mode, you must install Foreman on a freshly provisioned RHEL base system operating in FIPS mode. For more information, see Preparing your environment for installation in Installing Foreman 3.3 Server on RHEL/CentOS.

2.1.1. Upgrading a Connected Foreman server

Use this procedure for a Foreman server with access to the public internet

Warning
 If you customize configuration files, manually or using a tool such as Hiera, these changes are overwritten when the installation script runs during upgrading or updating. You can use the --noop option with the foreman-installer script to test for changes.
Upgrade Foreman server

  1. Create a backup.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

  4. In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Hosts > Discovered hosts. On the Discovered Hosts page, power off and then delete the discovered hosts. From the Select an Organization menu, select each organization in turn and repeat the process to power off and delete the discovered hosts. Make a note to reboot these hosts when the upgrade is complete.

  5. Determine if the system needs a reboot:

    1. Check the version of newest installed kernel:

      # rpm --query --last kernel | head -n 1

    2. Compare this to the version of currently running kernel:

      # uname --kernel-release

  6. Optional: If the newest kernel differs from the currently running kernel, reboot the system:

    # reboot

  7. If using a BASH shell, after a successful or failed upgrade, enter:

    # hash -d foreman-maintain service 2> /dev/null

2.2. Upgrading Smart Proxy Servers

This section describes how to upgrade Smart Proxy servers from 3.2 to 3.3.

Before You Begin

  • You must upgrade Foreman server before you can upgrade any Smart Proxy servers. Note that you can upgrade Smart Proxies separately from Foreman. For more information, see Upgrading Smart Proxies Separately from Foreman.

  • If you use Content Views to control updates to the base operating system of Smart Proxy server, update those Content Views with new repositories, publish, and promote their updated versions. For more information, see Managing Content Views in Managing Content.

  • Ensure the Smart Proxy’s base system is registered to the newly upgraded Foreman server.

  • Ensure the Smart Proxy has the correct organization and location settings in the newly upgraded Foreman server.

  • Review and update your firewall configuration prior to upgrading your Smart Proxy server. For more information, see Preparing Your Environment for Smart Proxy Installation in Installing an External Smart Proxy Server 3.3.

Upgrading Smart Proxy Servers

  1. Create a backup.

  2. Check when the kernel packages were last updated:

    # rpm -qa --last | grep kernel

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

    # reboot

  4. 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.

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

2.3. Upgrading the External Database

You can upgrade an external database from Enterprise Linux 7 to Enterprise Linux 8 while upgrading Foreman from 3.2 to 3.3.

Prerequisites

  • Create a new Enterprise Linux 8 based host for PostgreSQL server that follows the external database on Enterprise Linux 8 documentation.

Procedure

  1. Create a backup.

  2. Restore the backup on the new server.

  3. If Foreman reaches the new database server via the old name, no further changes are required. Otherwise reconfigure Foreman to use the new name:

    # foreman-installer \
--foreman-db-host newpostgres.example.com \
--katello-candlepin-db-host newpostgres.example.com \
--foreman-proxy-content-pulpcore-postgresql-host newpostgres.example.com

2.4. Performing Post-Upgrade Tasks

Some of the procedures in this section are optional. You can choose to perform only those procedures that are relevant to your installation.

2.4.1. Upgrading Discovery

If you use the PXE-based discovery process, then you must complete the discovery upgrade procedure on Foreman and on any Smart Proxy server with hosts that you want to be listed in Foreman on the Hosts > Discovered hosts page.

This section describes updating the PXELinux template and the boot image passed to hosts that use PXE booting to register themselves with Foreman server.

From Foreman 3.3, provisioning templates now have a separate association with a subnet, and do not default to using the TFTP Smart Proxy for that subnet. If you create subnets after the upgrade, you must specifically enable the Foreman or a Smart Proxy to provide a proxy service for discovery templates and then configure all subnets with discovered hosts to use a specific template Smart Proxy.

During the upgrade, for every subnet with a TFTP proxy enabled, the template Smart Proxy is set to be the same as the TFTP Smart Proxy. After the upgrade, check all subnets to verify this was set correctly.

These procedures are not required if you do not use PXE booting of hosts to enable Foreman to discover new hosts.

Upgrading Discovery on Foreman server

  1. Update the Discovery template in the Foreman web UI:

    1. In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Hosts > Provisioning templates.

    2. On the PXELinux global default line, click Clone.

    3. Enter a new name for the template in the Name field, for example ACME PXE global default.

    4. In the template editor field, change the line ONTIMEOUT local to ONTIMEOUT discovery and click Submit.

    5. In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Administer > Settings.

    6. On the Provisioning tab, set Default PXE global template entry to a custom value for your environment.

    7. Locate Global default PXELinux template and click on its Value.

    8. Select the name of the newly created template from the menu and click Submit.

    9. In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Hosts > Provisioning templates.

    10. Click Build PXE Default, then click OK.

    Note

    If the template is modified, a Foreman upgrade overrides it to its default version. Once the PXE Default configuration is built, the template configured in the Settings is deployed to the TFTP. This can result in deploying the default template if the new template is correctly set in the Settings.

  2. In the Foreman web UI, go to Configure > Discovery Rules and associate selected organizations and locations with discovery rules.

Verifying Subnets have a Template Smart Proxy
Ensure all subnets with discovered hosts have a template Smart Proxy:

  1. In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Subnets.

  2. Select the subnet you want to check.

  3. On the Smart Proxies tab, ensure a Template Smart Proxy has been set for this subnet.

For more information about configuring subnets with template Smart Proxies, see Configuring the Discovery Service in Provisioning Hosts.

2.4.2. Migrating Ansible Content

The upgrade from Enterprise Linux 7 to Enterprise Linux 8 includes an upgrade from Ansible Engine 2.9 to Ansible Core 2.12.

If you have custom Ansible content such as playbooks, job templates inside REX, roles and collections on disk, and you rely on modules being delivered by the Ansible RPM on Foreman, you have to take additional steps to adapt your Ansible installation or migrate your Ansible content.

Ansible Core contains only essential modules. In terms of FQCN notation namespace.collection.module, you can continue to use ansible.builtin.*, but everything else is missing in Ansible Core. That means you will be no longer able to use non-builtin Ansible modules as you were used to and you have to get them from another source, eventually.

You have the following options to handle your Ansible content after the upgrade:

  • You can obtain additional community-maintained collections that provide the non-essential functionality from Ansible Galaxy. For more information, see Installing collections in the Galaxy User Guide.

  • You can rewrite your Ansible roles, templates and other affected content.

Note

If you want to download and install Ansible content on Smart Proxy that does not have a connection to an external Ansible Galaxy server, then you must pass the content through Foreman server instead of using the URL of the Ansible Galaxy server in the configuration on the Smart Proxy directly:

  1. Sync the content from a Ansible Galaxy server to a custom repository on your Foreman server.

  2. Configure Ansible on your Smart Proxy to download the content from Foreman server.

To find out what content is affected after the upgrade, you can run:

# ansible-lint --enable-list only-builtins -p path/to/your/playbook/play.yml

You need ansible-lint 6.1.0 or newer. You can install it from pypi.org.

2.4.3. Reclaiming PostgreSQL Space

The PostgreSQL database can use a large amount of disk space especially in heavily loaded deployments. Use this procedure to reclaim some of this disk space on Foreman.

Procedure

  1. Stop all services, except for the postgresql service:

    # foreman-maintain service stop --exclude postgresql

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

    # su - postgres -c 'vacuumdb --full --all'

  3. Start the other services when the vacuum completes:

    # foreman-maintain service start

3. Upgrading Foreman or Smart Proxy to Enterprise Linux 8 In-Place Using Leapp

Use this procedure to upgrade your Foreman or Smart Proxy installation from Enterprise Linux 7 to Enterprise Linux 8.

Prerequisites

  • Foreman 3.3 or Smart Proxy 3.3 running on Enterprise Linux 7.

  • Foreman or Smart Proxy installations running on CentOS 7 can be upgraded to CentOS Stream 8 or a Red Hat Enterprise Linux rebuild.

  • Foreman or Smart Proxy installations running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 can be upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

  • Access to available repositories or a local mirror of repositories.

  • If you previously upgraded Foreman or Smart Proxy from an earlier version, and the /var/lib/pgsql contained the PostgreSQL database content before the migration from PostgreSQL 9 to PostgreSQL 12 from the SCL, empty /var/lib/pgsql before proceeding.

  • During the upgrade, the PostgreSQL data is moved from /var/opt/rh/rh-postgresql12/lib/pgsql/data/ to /var/lib/pgsql/data/. If these two paths reside on the same partition, no further action is required. If they reside on different partitions, ensure that there is enough space for the data to be copied over. You can move the PostgreSQL data on your own and the upgrade will skip this step if /var/opt/rh/rh-postgresql12/lib/pgsql/data/ does not exist.

Procedure

  1. Configure the repositories to obtain Leapp.

    On CentOS, configure the @theforeman/leapp COPR Repository, which contains newer Leapp packages than those shipped by AlmaLinux/ELevate, and support Foreman or Smart Proxy upgrades:

    # curl -o /etc/yum.repos.d/theforeman-leapp.repo https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/theforeman/leapp/repo/epel-7/group_theforeman-leapp-epel-7.repo

    On Red Hat Enterprise Linux, enable the rhel-7-server-extras-rpms repository:

    # subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

  2. Install required packages:

    # yum install leapp leapp-repository

  3. Install additional OS specific packages (leapp-data-almalinux for AlmaLinux, leapp-data-centos for CentOS Stream, or leapp-data-rocky for Rocky Linux). Note that this is not required for Red Hat Enterprise Linux based installations.

    # yum install leapp-data-centos

  4. Add Foreman specific repositories to /etc/leapp/files/leapp_upgrade_repositories.repo:

    [leapp-foreman]
name=Foreman 3.3
baseurl=https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/3.3/el8/$basearch
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-foreman
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
module_hotfixes=1




[leapp-foreman-plugins]
name=Foreman plugins 3.3
baseurl=https://yum.theforeman.org/plugins/3.3/el8/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-foreman
module_hotfixes=1

[leapp-foreman-client]
name=Foreman client 3.3
baseurl=https://yum.theforeman.org/client/3.3/el8/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-foreman-client

[leapp-puppet7]
name=Puppet 7 Repository el 8 - $basearch
baseurl=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/puppet7/el/8/$basearch
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-puppet7-release
       file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-2025-04-06-puppet7-release
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1

    • If you are using Puppet 6 instead of Puppet 7, replace the 7 with a 6 in the leapp-puppet7 entry.

    • You need a Puppet repository for the Puppet agent that the installer is using.

  5. We do not support Enterprise Linux 8 installations with EPEL 8 enabled, so remove epel-release:

    # yum remove epel-release

  6. Remove centos-release-scl and centos-release-scl-rh repositories:

    # yum remove centos-release-scl centos-release-scl-rh

  7. Let Leapp analyze your system:

    # leapp preupgrade

    The first run is expected to fail but report issues and inhibit the upgrade.

    Examine the report in the /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt file, answer all questions (using leapp answer) and manually resolve the other reported problems. The following commands show the most common steps required:

    # rmmod pata_acpi
# echo PermitRootLogin yes | tee -a /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# leapp answer --section remove_pam_pkcs11_module_check.confirm=True

    leapp preupgrade might fail with a dependency resolution error such as:

    • "package rubygem-fx-0.5.0-2.el8.noarch requires rubygem(railties) >= 4.0.0, but none of the providers can be installed"

    • "package rubygem-railties-6.0.4.7-1.el8.noarch requires rubygem(thor) < 2.0, but none of the providers can be installed"

    If this happens, do the following to clean up packages that cannot automatically upgrade (rubygem(thor) and rubygem(railties) in the example above):

    # yum remove rubygem-thor rubygem-railties

    If leapp preupgrade inhibits the upgrade with Unsupported network configuration because there are multiple legacy named network interfaces, follow the instructions shown by Leapp to rename the interfaces, followed by an installer run to reconfigure Foreman or Smart Proxy to use the new interface names:

    # foreman-installer --help |grep 'interface.*eth'
    --foreman-proxy-dhcp-interface  DHCP listen interface (current: "eth0")
    --foreman-proxy-dns-interface  DNS interface (current: "eth0")

    If eth0 was renamed to em0, call the installer to use the new interface name with:

    # foreman-installer --foreman-proxy-dhcp-interface=em0 --foreman-proxy-dns-interface=em0

  8. Ensure leapp preupgrade has no issues.

  9. Run:

    # leapp upgrade

  10. Reboot the system.

    After the system reboots, a live system conducts the upgrade, reboots to fix SELinux labels, then reboots into the final Enterprise Linux 8 system.

  11. Leapp finishes the upgrade, watch it with:

    # journalctl -u leapp_resume -f

  12. Reindex the databases:

    # runuser -u postgres -- reindexdb -a

  13. Enable the Foreman module:

    # dnf module enable foreman:el8

  14. For Foreman only and not Smart Proxy, if you require SELinux to be in enforcing mode, run the following command before changing SELinux to enforcing mode::

    # dnf reinstall foreman-selinux --disableplugin=foreman-protector
Note

If you install the system and need to use --disable-system-checks, the last step of the upgrade is going to fail, and you need to call foreman-installer --disable-system-checks manually once the system reboots.

4. Migrating Foreman to a New Enterprise Linux System

When you migrate your Foreman, you create a backup of your Foreman server and your Smart Proxy, install a fresh instance, and restore your backup on the new instance. After your migration is complete, you can then decommission the earlier instance of Foreman server and Smart Proxy.

Terminology

Ensure that you understand the following terms:

Source server

The origin of migration on which you create a backup.

Target server

The new server on which you restore the backup.

High-Level Procedure

To migrate your Foreman to new hardware, follow these high-level steps:

  1. Create a backup of the Foreman server or Smart Proxy server on the source server.

  2. Perform a fresh installation of the Foreman server or Smart Proxy server on a target server.

    • Install a minimal Enterprise Linux 8 instance with the capacity to store backup files.

    • Do not install any operating system software groups or third-party applications.

  3. Restore the backup on the target server.

4.1. Creating a Backup of a Server on Enterprise Linux 7

Before you perform a fresh installation of the Foreman server or Smart Proxy server on the Enterprise Linux 8 system, back up your Foreman server or Smart Proxy server data on the Enterprise Linux 7 system by creating an offline backup.

If you recently created an offline backup, you can perform an incremental backup to update the existing backup.

Procedure

4.2. Performing a Fresh Installation of a Server on Enterprise Linux 8

After you have created a backup of the Foreman server or Smart Proxy server on the source server, you can install Foreman server or Smart Proxy server on the target server.

4.3. Restoring a Backup of a Server on Enterprise Linux 8

After you perform a fresh installation of Foreman server or Smart Proxy server on the target server, you can restore the backup you previously created.

Procedure

5. Updating Foreman server and Content Hosts

Use this chapter to update your existing Foreman server, Smart Proxy server, and Content Hosts to a new patch version, for example, from 3.3.0 to 3.3.1.

Updates patch security vulnerabilities and minor issues discovered after code is released, and are often fast and non-disruptive to your operating environment.

Before updating, back up your Foreman server and all Smart Proxy servers. For more information, see Backing Up Foreman server and Smart Proxy server in Administering Foreman.