Release Notes for SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.2

These release notes cover the following areas:

• General: Information that everybody should read.
• Installation: Additional pertinent information for the Installation.
• Known Issues: Information about known issues of the product.
• Providing Feedback

General

SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.2

SUSE Lifecycle Management Server (SLMS) is a component of SUSE Studio Standard Edition and SUSE Studio Advanced Edition. SUSE Lifecycle Management Server deliver updates for application images or appliances based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP1 products. It handles authentication, entitlement and access control required for software vendors to distribute updates to their customers. SLMS is primarily responsible for creating and then managing access to update repositories containing software images or appliances. It also provides a basic interface for managing customer data and their subscriptions. For customers it provides a simple customer center which allows them to get a read-only access to information about their subscriptions.

SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.2 requires SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 as host on the x86_64 architecture. For managing application images or appliances for IBM System z, SLMS does not require a System z instance.

If you add SUSE Lifecycle Management Server during your installation process, online update repositories are added as soon as you register your product.

Important change since SLMS 1.1

SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.2 introduces a simple customer center. If you run SUSE Lifecycle Management Server on a single server, HTTP/HTTPS ports show the customer center, where your credentials defined during the set-up don't work. To log-in to SLMS administration (as known in SLMS 1.1), point your web browser to https:///admin or htps://:4849.

Support

The following packages are also part of other Novell products with various support levels. They are fully supported to provide functionality needed by SLMS 1.2:

• check-create-certificate
• createrepo
• rubygem-rails
• FastCGI
• collectd
• haveged
• libcollectdclient0
• liboping0
• libstatgrab6
• perl-Cache-Cache
• perl-DBD-Pg
• perl-Error
• perl-Log-Dispatch
• perl-Log-Log4perl
• perl-Params-Validate
• perl-YAML
• python-lxml
• ruby-dbus
• ruby-fcgi
• rubygem-actionmailer-2_3
• rubygem-actionpack-2_3
• rubygem-activerecord-2_3
• rubygem-activeresource-2_3
• rubygem-activesupport-2_3
• rubygem-builder
• rubygem-daemons
• rubygem-declarative_authorization
• rubygem-delayed_job
• rubygem-fastthread
• rubygem-gemcutter
• rubygem-gettext
• rubygem-gettext_activerecord
• rubygem-gettext_rails
• rubygem-haml
• rubygem-http_accept_language
• rubygem-inifile
• rubygem-json_pure
• rubygem-locale
• rubygem-locale_rails
• rubygem-open4
• rubygem-paperclip
• rubygem-passenger
• rubygem-polkit
• rubygem-postgres
• rubygem-rack
• rubygem-rails-2_3
• rubygem-rake
• rubygem-restful_authentication
• rubygem-restility
• rubygem-rpam
• rubygem-sqlite3
• rubygem-validates_timeliness
• rubygem-webyast-rake-tasks
• rubygem-will_paginate
• rubygem-xml-simple
• rubygems
• yum-metadata-parser

Installation

SLMS 1.2 can be either deployed as an appliance, or installed as an add-on product. The add-on product can be added during installation, so the additional packages that come with SLMS can be selected and installed right from the beginning, or later.

Be aware that before you run SLMS 1.2 you also need to install all updates of SLES11-SP1.

If you install SLMS on top of a SLES that has the latest maintenance patches applied, you may get dependency errors in some cases if you don't also use the latest SLMS patches.

To avoid this, please make sure that you re-run the Novell Customer Center (NCC) Configuration in YaST2 right after you have added the SLMS installation repository to your system, but before you install any packages from SLMS. This will add the SLMS update repository to your setup.

YaST2 will then automatically use newer packages from the update repository if available. Your system needs to be connected to the Internet for both running the NCC Configuration and receiving actual maintenance updates.

Novell continuously releases maintenance updates for SLMS, and newer packages are likely to be available compared to those installed from media. To install updates you can use for example 'zypper patch' command line command.

Existing SSL certificate

If your system contains a certificate at /etc/ssl/servercerts/servercert.pem before installation, SLMS will use it and will not generate its own certificate. If it is not signed properly or is not valid in some other way, delete both /etc/slms.d/certs/servercert.pem and /etc/slms.d/certs/serverkey.pem and restart SLMS. SLMS will create a new certificate on start.

Web server for WebYaST

WebYaST 1.2 uses a new web server as the back-end technology; lighttpd, which was used in previous releases, has been replaced with nginx. If you upgrade from 1.1 to 1.2, you can also remove lighttpd as it is not needed any more.

Known Issues

This is a list of issues known in this release.

Status of appliances after upgrade from 1.1

When you upgrade SLMS from 1.1 to 1.2, for appliances which have not had any patch released yet, SLMS will display incorrect number of new packages to upgrade. It will get fixed as soon as you release first patch for the respective appliance.

Link from WebYaST Control Center to SLMS administration

When you configure two-server scenario and have the external port disabled on the internal server, the link to SLMS administration in the WebYaST control center does not work correctly. To reach the SLMS administration interface, point your browser to htps://:4849. In a single-server scenario the same may be valid depending on your firewall set-up.

Upgrade of PostgreSQL Database

If you update the PostgreSQL Database, which is used by SLMS, it is possible that SLMS will not work properly until it is restarted. After upgrade of PostgreSQL we strongly recomment to restart SLMS via the command "/sbin/rcslms restart" or rebooting the server.

WebYaST reports "unregistered SLMS" server when using SMT registration server

When registering an SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.2 instance against SMT, make sure the URL of SMT in /etc/suseRegister.conf is in format (note the space around '=') for successful registration.

url = https://smt.example.com

Providing feedback to our products

Please read the READMEs on the CD.

In case of encountering a bug please report it through your support contact.

Your SUSE Lifecycle Management Server team

Mon Jul 6 15:28:29 UTC 2015