# Author : Steve Hardy : [email protected]

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1 - Introduction
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I've developed these scripts over time to simplify errata management, and to
provide a semi-automated "staging" workflow.

They are mostly just a wrapper for spacecmd, with calls to
spacewalk-create-channel or spacewalk-clone-by-date in clone_release_from_rhel_release.sh

Note that these are a work in progress, if you use them please test carefully &
let me know (or send patches) if you find bugs or implement new features.

Also please note, I've been refactoring them to sanitise, remove hardcoded
references, improve consistency of naming conventions etc.  This work is
ongoing so I can't promise everything will work properly, so *please* test
before using in "real" satellite/spacewalk environments, and make sure you have
adequate backups etc to recover if they do the wrong thing and eat all your
satellite content... :)

Accordingly I take NO RESPONSIBILITY WHATSOEVER for any errors, loss of data 
etc, they are provided purely as an example of spacecmd usage, in the hope that
 people may find them useful (and contribute back).

Also note that none of these scripts require root priveliges to run, you will 
be much safer if you simply setup your satellite/spacewalk user credentials in 
~/.spacecmd/config in your normal user account.

I am aware that others probably have different/better ways of doing what I've
done here, and I'm interested to hear if that is the case, please feel free to
drop me a mail with links to any other projects.

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2 - "Quickstart" guide to getting the scripts working
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- Install a recent version of spacecmd Get spacecmd from
http://spacewalk.redhat.com/yum/nightly Note - do NOT use the EPEL version, it
is old and buggy, and won't work anyway because these scripts rely on very
recent spacecmd features.

- Check out a copy of the scripts.  They can run locally on a satellite server,
or in some cases, on some other machine which has network access to the
satellite XMLRPC interface.  Note - Almost all of my testing has been running
them locally on a satellite/spacewalk server talking to the XMLRPC interface on
localhost

cd /home/$USERNAME
git clone git://github.com/hardys/clone_release_scripts.git

- Edit config file for spacecmd to contain your satellite login credentials:

$ cat ~/.spacecmd/config
[spacecmd]
server=localhost
username=satellite_username
password=satellite_password
nossl=0

- Update the RELNAME, variable in common_functions.sh to suit your 
required content prefix (see below for full descrition of naming conventions)

- Add the script directory to your PATH:
export PATH=/home/$USERNAME/clone_release_scripts:$PATH

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3 -"Release" content and naming conventions
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For the purposes of these scripts, a "Release" will comprise of the following:

- Clone Software Channels
- Kickstart profile(s)
- Activation keys
- Config channels

These items will be identified via a fixed-format naming convention/prefix:

prefix_<RHEL_RELEASE>_<$CUSTOMER_RELEASE>.<$CUSTOMER_INTERIM_VERSION>

e.g:

prefix_5_1.0 : This would define a release for RHEL 5, major version 1,
interim version 0.  Note the major/minor numbers here are *not* intended to
map to the RHEL release numbering, they are simply used to identify timeline/
progression on the "clone releases" created with these scripts

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3.1 - Periodic Releases ("clone releases")
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The clone_release_from_base_channels.sh script implements a "point in time"
clone, cloning the base-channels in current state (e.g all errata to-date)

The clone_release_from_rhel_release.sh provides a method to generate a periodic
release based on a specific update level of RHEL.  This may be desirable for 
certification purposes.

Periodic releases (of either point-in-time or rhel-release variety) will create
a new "major" version release, e.g prefix_5_1.0, prefix_5_2.0, prefix_5_3.0, 
with (non software-channel) content cloned from the most recent previous
release (which may be a "major" or an "interim" release)

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3.2 - Interim Releases "clone of clone releases"
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The clone_release_from_existing.sh provides the capability to clone an existing
release, and push specific errata into the build, e.g critical security fixes.

Interim releases will increment the interim version number in the release
prefix, e.g prefix_5_2.1, prefix_5_2.2, prefix_5_2.3 etc.

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3.3 - Migration of systems between releases
-------------------------------------------

A scripted method of migrating systems between release levels is provided:

 * Run clone_release_system_subscribe.sh which resubscribes the system(s)
   to the new clone software-channels (and configuration-channnels).  Note
   this does *not* re-register the system so you will not get any changes from
   updated activation keys in the new clone release.
 * Schedule a "yum clean all && yum -y update" which will pull the updated
   packages from the newly subscribed software-channels
 * Schedule a sync of the satellite managed config files (rhn-cfg-client get)

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4.1 Content migration
---------------------

Two (or more) satellite/spacewalk servers can be installed, such that there
is a "development/staging" satellite, and a "production" satellite.

Then the clone_release_export.sh and clone_release_import.sh scripts can
be used to facilitate a progression of "clone release" content from the
development satellite to the production one.

This is deliberately a manual process (export, then import), which ensures 
separation between the two satellites.  I guess I could use ISS or something
but since that only handles software channel content, it seemed easier to do
a dumb export/import process, which also allows for easy archiving/backup of
releases.