SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.3

Release Notes

Publication date: 2014-06-17

1 General

SUSE Lifecycle Management Server (SLMS) is a component of SUSE Studio. SUSE Lifecycle Management Server deliver updates for application images or appliances based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2 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 updates. It also provides a basic interface for managing customer data and their subscriptions. For customers it provides a simple customer center that allows them to get a read-only access to information about their subscriptions.

SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.3 requires SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP2 as a host system on the x86_64 architecture.

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

1.1 SLMS Customer Center

SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.3 provides 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.

1.2 Support

The following packages are also part of other SUSE Linux Enterprise products with various support levels. They are fully supported to provide functionality needed by SLMS 1.3:

  • 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-abstract_method

  • rubygem-actionmailer-3_2

  • rubygem-actionpack-3_2

  • rubygem-activemodel-3_2

  • rubygem-activerecord-3_2

  • rubygem-activeresource-3_2

  • rubygem-activesupport-3_2

  • rubygem-arel-3_0

  • rubygem-bcrypt-ruby

  • rubygem-builder-3_0

  • rubygem-bundler

  • rubygem-cancan

  • rubygem-cheetah

  • rubygem-cocaine

  • rubygem-daemon_controller

  • rubygem-daemons

  • rubygem-declarative_authorization

  • rubygem-delayed_job

  • rubygem-delayed_job_active_record

  • rubygem-devise

  • rubygem-devise-i18n

  • rubygem-devise_unix2_chkpwd_authenticatable

  • rubygem-erubis-2_7

  • rubygem-factory_girl

  • rubygem-factory_girl_rails

  • rubygem-fast_gettext

  • rubygem-fastthread

  • rubygem-gemcutter

  • rubygem-gettext

  • rubygem-gettext_i18n_rails

  • rubygem-haml

  • rubygem-hike

  • rubygem-hoe

  • rubygem-http_accept_language

  • rubygem-i18n-0_6

  • rubygem-inifile

  • rubygem-journey-1_0

  • rubygem-json

  • rubygem-json_pure

  • rubygem-locale

  • rubygem-locale_rails

  • rubygem-mail-2_4

  • rubygem-mime-types

  • rubygem-mocha

  • rubygem-multi_json

  • rubygem-net_observer

  • rubygem-nokogiri

  • rubygem-orm_adapter

  • rubygem-paperclip-2

  • rubygem-passenger

  • rubygem-passenger-apache2

  • rubygem-passenger-nginx

  • rubygem-pg

  • rubygem-polkit

  • rubygem-polyglot

  • rubygem-rack

  • rubygem-rack-1_4

  • rubygem-rack-cache-1_2

  • rubygem-rack-ssl

  • rubygem-rack-test-0_6

  • rubygem-rails-3_2

  • rubygem-rails-i18n

  • rubygem-railties-3_2

  • rubygem-rake

  • rubygem-rake-compiler

  • rubygem-rdoc

  • rubygem-restful_authentication

  • rubygem-restility

  • rubygem-ruby-dbus

  • rubygem-rubyforge

  • rubygem-selenium-client

  • rubygem-sprockets-2_2

  • rubygem-sqlite3

  • rubygem-studio_api

  • rubygem-test-unit

  • rubygem-testunitxml

  • rubygem-thor

  • rubygem-tilt-1_1

  • rubygem-treetop

  • rubygem-tzinfo

  • rubygem-warden

  • rubygem-webyast-administrator

  • rubygem-webyast-eulas

  • rubygem-webyast-firewall

  • rubygem-webyast-network

  • rubygem-webyast-rake-tasks

  • rubygem-webyast-registration

  • rubygem-webyast-slms

  • rubygem-webyast-software

  • rubygem-webyast-status

  • rubygem-webyast-system

  • rubygem-will_paginate

  • rubygem-xml-simple

  • rubygem-yard

  • rubygems

  • yum-common

  • yum-metadata-parser

2 Installation of SUSE Lifecycle Management Server 1.3

SLMS 1.3 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 1.3 you also need to install all updates of SLES11-SP2.

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

To avoid these errors, 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.

If you install SLMS together with SLES11-SP2 installation, manually enable the WebYaST and collectd services after the installation finishes.

SUSE 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.

2.1 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.

2.2 Changes in WebYaST

WebYaST 1.3 has merged the REST API service with the Web User Interface. This change means that the Web UI is now available on port 4984.

2.3 Firewall Configuration

If you configure a separate internal and external server and open the firewall of the internal server, then the PostgreSQL port will be open as well. Use the firewall configuration if you need more detailed settings. Note that the communication with the database is not encrypted, which means that the database credentials as well as the database records itself could be read and modified by an attacker with access to your network.

2.4 Update of the PostgreSQL Database

SLMS 1.3 uses a PostgreSQL 9.1 database. After updating from 1.2, PostgreSQL 8 is still running. You must migrate the database to the new format as soon as possible via the migrate_postgresql_database script, which is installed together with SLMS 1.3. See the documentation for more details.

2.5 Change of Appliance Adapation Process

With SLMS 1.3, it is not needed to adapt an appliance. However, in order to have an appliance visible in SLMS, you must configure it in Studio Onsite via the Update tab. The same applies for appliances previously adapted with SLMS 1.2. Until appliances are configured in Studio Onsite, they are not visible in SLMS.

After fresh rebuild of an appliance in Studio, the update stack on the running appliance will report one package to update; this is an internal package for appliance updates tracking.

2.6 Configuration of Email Redirection

If you intend to redirect root emails to another host, make sure that the Postfix email server is configured properly; otherwise emails from the system may not be delivered, based on your system settings.

3 Known Issues

This is a list of issues known in this release.

3.1 Upgrade of the 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 upgrading PostgreSQL we strongly recommend to restart SLMS with the command /sbin/rcslms restart or to reboot the server.

3.2 Reporting of Available Patches

If you create custom testing repositories for an appliance, the amount of available updates (as reported in the header) may be incorrect. To get the details about available updates, see the Updates tab.

4 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

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