Red Hat Enterprise Linux for UNC

The UNC System has acquired a site license for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This site will help you get familiar with this product and what you need to do to access RHEL. We will cover access for NC State University and universities that access RHEL from the UNC GA directly. Other universities in the UNC System may have their own access methods, so talk to your local IT staff.

For NC State there will also be some snippets of information about Realm Linux, which is based on RHEL products, where it differs from these access methods.

Red Hat Network Accounts

The Red Hat Network (RHN) controls access to errata, security updates, and is what keeps track of our usage of RHEL. Below are the guide lines for acquiring an RHN account to register and manage a collection of RHEL or Realm Linux machines.

As of May, 2005 all RHEL machines under the UNC System contract must use one of the RHN Satellites rather than Red Hat's hosted RHN service. The following will help you get setup with NC State University's RHN Satellite or the UNC GA Satellite although other universities in the system may have their own Satellite.

RHN Account Guide Lines

NC State University

At NC State University you will need an RHN account to deploy and maintain both RHEL and Realm Linux machines. RHN accounts are restricted to full time IT staff and those sponsored by a full time IT staffer. Your account and password will be the same as your Unity user name and password. The NCSU RHN Satellite URL is below.

• rhn.linux.ncsu.edu

When installing Realm Linux with Web-Kickstart you are not required to have an RHN account. You will only need an RHN Activation Key used to register the machine with RHN. These keys are usually specific to an IT group so you or another member of the group may be responsible for acquiring these keys and access to RHN.

UNC GA

Accounts on the GA Satellite are provided for IT staffers at UNC universities that participate in the Red Hat contract and do not have their own Satellite. Normally, one or two full time IT staffers at each university are chosen to lead the RHEL initiative and are given permissions to create further accounts for others at the same university. These people serve as the local contact point for accounts and RHN support.

As the GA Satellite is shared between multiple universities we issue user names that start with the abbreviation of the university. For example:

ncsu.jjneely

Your password is also unique to the GA Satellite. Groups for collections of machines are also named in a similar fashion.

The GA Satellite is located here:

• rhnsat.northcarolina.edu

Getting an Account

To initiate a request for an RHN account please send an email to uncrhel@help.ncsu.edu with the following information:

• Preferred User ID (For NCSU accounts this is required to be your unity id)
• First and Last Name
• Email Address
• University
• Department or Organization

You will receive an automated confirmation with a support ticket number shortly.

Downloading the RHEL ISOs

The RHEL ISOs are available for UNC System IP addresses. If you are on campus you should be able to download the ISOs from the following web site.

• http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/rhel/isos

RHN Satellite Configuration

Once your RHEL machine is installed, or perhaps from the Kickstart for automated installations, you need to configure your machine to use the correct RHN Satellite. You can do this by installing one of the following RPM packages depending on the Satellite you will use.

These packages will install the SSL certificate for a specific RHN Satellite and alter your system's configuration to point to this Satellite. Also, RPM PGP keys will be imported that can be used to verify this RPM and any future updates. A Yum repository will also be configured so that your machine will pull down future versions of the configuration package in case an important bit of the configuration needs updating like the SSL certificates.

There is a specific RPM package for each supported RHEL version and each Satellite.

RHEL 4

NC State University:

rpm -ihv \
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/CLS/UNCRHEL/4/base/noarch/rhn-org-ncsu-1.0-7.EL4.noarch.rpm

UNC GA:

rpm -ihv \
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/CLS/UNCRHEL/4/base/noarch/rhn-org-uncga-1.0-7.EL4.noarch.rpm

RHEL 5

NC State University:

rpm -ihv \
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/CLS/UNCRHEL/5/base/noarch/rhn-org-ncsu-1.0-3.EL5.noarch.rpm

UNC GA:

rpm -ihv \
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/CLS/UNCRHEL/5/base/noarch/rhn-org-uncga-1.0-3.EL5.noarch.rpm

For RHEL 5 you will also need an Installation Number. Use one of the following:

• RHEL 5 Server: fa60-b924-fa64-f4b9
• RHEL 5 Client: 7502-4077-7516-1441

Support

If you require assistance getting RHEL setup please attempt to contact your campus RHEL and RHN support personnel. Otherwise you may participate in the UNCRHEL mailing list. Subscribe by sending an email to mj2@lists.ncsu.edu with a body of "subscribe uncrhel". You may post by sending mail to uncrhel@lists.ncsu.edu.

Support tickets can be creating by emailing uncrhel@help.ncsu.edu.