The Foreman installer is a collection of Puppet modules that installs everything required for a full working Foreman setup. It uses native OS packaging (e.g. RPM and .deb packages) and adds necessary configuration for the complete installation.
Components include the Foreman web UI, Smart Proxy, a Puppet server, and optionally 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.
The installation will require 4GB of memory, see System Requirements for more information.
Supported platforms
Enterprise Linux 8, x86_64
Enterprise Linux 9, x86_64
Debian 11 (Bullseye), amd64
Debian 12 (Bookworm), amd64
Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal), amd64
Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy), amd64
Enterprise Linux
The Foreman packages and installer are tested on AlmaLinux 8, AlmaLinux 9, CentOS Stream 8 and CentOS Stream 9, but other RHEL derivatives can work because they’re similar. Sometimes additional work may be needed. For any queries for these platforms raise a question in discourse support section
Installation
The Foreman installer uses Puppet (6 or later required) 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. It’s not advisable to follow the steps below on an existing system, since the installer will affect the configuration of several components.
If you want to manage content (for example, RPMs, Kickstart trees, ISO and KVM images, OSTree content, and more) with Foreman please follow the Katello installation instructions. If you are a new user, ensure that you familiarize yourself with Katello and decide whether you want to use its features because installing Katello on top of an existing Foreman is unsupported. Note that you cannot install Katello on Debian systems.
Select operating system
To provide specific installation instructions, please select your operating system:
Repositories
No operating system selected.
Enable Puppet's 7.x repository:
Enable Puppet's 7.x repository:
Enable the Foreman repositories:
Enable the Foreman repositories:
Enable the Foreman module:
Enable Puppet's 7.x repository:
Enable the Foreman repositories:
Enable Puppet's 7.x repository:
Enable the Foreman repositories:
Enable Puppet's 8.x repository:
Enable the Foreman repositories:
Enable Puppet's 7.x repository:
Enable the Foreman repositories:
Downloading the installer
No operating system selected.
Running the installer
Ensure that ping $(hostname -f) shows the real IP address, not 127.0.1.1. Change or remove this entry from /etc/hosts if present.
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 given in the Installation Options section. Adding -v will disable the progress bar and display all changes. To run the installer, execute:
After it completes, the installer will print some details about where to find Foreman and the Smart Proxy. Output should be similar to this:
Next-generation documentation
Over the last year, Foreman community members have been open-sourcing Red Hat documentation to make more comprehensive guides available to Foreman users. At the moment, the following guides have been migrated to a work-in-progress Foreman and Katello documentation site. This project is not yet complete, but you might find useful information in some of the following guides: