Provisioning

See the Foreman manual for general information on configuring provisioning.

Templates

Katello ships a number of templates in addition to the standard Foreman ones. When using these templates, if a host has a Host group with an Activation Key, it will register as a Content Host automatically.

• Katello Kickstart Default - Kickstart template for Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and other Red Hat-compatible operating systems.
• Katello Kickstart Default Finish - image-based provisioning
• Katello Kickstart Default User Data - cloud-init template for EC2 and OpenStack
• subscription_manager_registration - Snippet for registering a host for content

To customize any of the above templates, simply clone them and add your changes.

When you synchronize a repository with a distribution such as Fedora or CentOS, Katello will automatically create the operating system and assign these default templates. You may change the defaults by going to Administer > Settings, and selecting the Katello tab.

If provisioning hosts using a synced CentOS 8 repository, the AppStream repository is needed for Kickstart to work. To set this up, create an “AppStream” repository within the same lifecycle environment and content view as the CentOS 8 repository and sync it. Katello will automatically add this AppStream repo to the Kickstart file. After creating the host using CentOS 8 content, double check that the generated Kickstart file mentions the AppStream repo. The host provisioning should proceed automatically as expected.

Note: Currently, CentOS 8 Anaconda requires that the AppStream repository is specifically named “AppStream”. To get around this, edit the Kickstart default provisioning template (or create a new one) to ensure this block:

<% @additional_media.each do |medium| -%>
repo --name <%= medium[:name] %> --baseurl <%= medium[:url] %> <%= medium[:install] ? ' --install' : '' %><%= proxy_string %>
<% end -%>

will produce a line with repo --name AppStream --baseurl <AppStream repo url>.

For example, consider replacing that code block with:

<% @additional_media.each do |medium| -%>
<% if (medium[:url].include?("AppStream") and @host.operatingsystem.name == '< REPLACE ME >' and os_major >= 8) -%>
repo --name AppStream --baseurl <%= medium[:url] %>
<% else -%>
repo --name <%= medium[:name] %> --baseurl <%= medium[:url] %> <%= medium[:install] ? ' --install' : '' %><%= proxy_string %>
<% end -%>
<% end %>

Related CentOS 8 issue