Installing orcharhino Server (Offline)

This guide describes how to install orcharhino Server in a disconnected network environment. We recommend reading the orcharhino Installation Guide before starting the orcharhino Server offline installation.

This is an advanced installation method for orcharhino 5.12. We recommend that you contact us first if you want to install orcharhino in a disconnected environment.

Offline Installation Requirements

Your system must meet the following requirements, regardless of whether it is a virtual or bare-metal machine:

Minimum Recommended

OS

Alma Linux 8, Oracle Linux 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, or Rocky Linux 8

For more information, see OS requirements.

CPU

4 cores

8 cores

RAM

20 GiB

32 GiB

HDD 1 (/)

30 GiB

50 GiB

HDD 2 (/var)

~ 40 GiB for each Enterprise Linux distribution

~ 80 GiB for each Debian or Ubuntu distribution

~ 500 GiB (or as appropriate) if you plan to maintain additional repositories or keep multiple versions of packages

orcharhino Server requires two hard drives; one is used for the root partition and the other one for the data repositories. This separation is essential for the creation of snapshots and backups. The Kickstart files provided by ATIX AG do not work with a single drive system.

The main directories on /var are:

  • /var/cache/pulp/

  • /var/lib/pulp/

  • /var/lib/pgsql/

While it is technically possible to use different partitions for those directories, ATIX AG does not recommend doing so as it will negatively affect the overall performance of your orcharhino.

Using symbolic links is not an option as they break orcharhino-installer and corrupt the SELinux context if introduced at a later stage.

Ensure that you allocate sufficient hard drive resources at the beginning. Running out of space for your data repositories during regular orcharhino usage leads to significant pain.

To create backups using orcharhino-maintain, which rely on LVM snapshots, ensure your LVM volume group where vg-data resides has more than 2 GiB free disk space available. The free disk space is used during the creation of the snapshot to store all changes that are made to the database.

ATIX AG does not support using third party repositories on your orcharhino Server or orcharhino Proxies. Resolving package conflicts or other issues due to third party or custom repositories is not part of your orcharhino support subscription. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Preparing Content for Offline Installation

You need to download the necessary repositories from ACC to install orcharhino without network connection. This procedure describes how to synchronize all required packages to an existing host with a connection to ATIX ACC. Note that this is not the host orcharhino will be installed on, but it must run the same operating system as the host you will install orcharhino on, either CentOS 7, Oracle Linux 7, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

The preparation uses orcharhino-maintain to create small bash scripts to help you prepare your orcharhino Server offline installation. For more information, see orcharhino Server Offline Installation in the ATIX Service Portal.

Manually Registering a Host with ACC

Register a host with ACC to synchronize the necessary repositories to install orcharhino Server.

Prerequisite

  • You have a host with a connection to ATIX ACC. This host is used to synchronize content from ATIX ACC to an offline medium such as a DVD or flash drive. For more information, see prerequisites in the orcharhino Installation guide.

Procedure

  1. Download the install_orcharhino.sh script from ATIX ACC:

    # wget URL

    For the URL, see orcharhino Server Offline Installation in the ATIX Service Portal.

  2. Register your host with ACC:

    # ./install_orcharhino.sh My_orcharhino_Registration_Key -o 5.12 --register-only

  3. Generate bash scripts and repository file:

    # cd /opt/orcharhino/maintain/repo_map/
# ./repolist.py --offline -o 5.12 --distro-version latest --offline-path /mnt/my_disk/my_repos

Creating Local Repositories for orcharhino Server

Prerequisites

  • You have manually registered a host with ACC.

  • You have at least 100 GiB of free disk space on your host. Run df -h to view available disk space.

Procedure

  1. Install packages to create local repositories:

    # yum install -y yum-utils createrepo

  2. Generate a local copy of each repository:

    # ./tmp/synchronize_repositories.sh

  3. Create file-repositories for each repository:

    # ./tmp/create_file_repositories.sh

You now have local file repositories in the path as specified in the repolist.py command, for example /media/my_disk/my_repos/.

Creating Local Repositories for orcharhino Clients

Depending on the operating systems of your managed hosts, you need to synchronize orcharhino Client repositories from ATIX. Copy the synchronized orcharhino Client repositories to /media/my_disk/my_repos/.

YUM Repositories

For YUM repositories, you can use the same procedure as above to synchronize orcharhino Clients. This works for Alma Linux, Amazon Linux, CentOS, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

APT Repositories

You can use debmirror to synchronize orcharhino Client repositories for Debian and Ubuntu:

# debmirror -h _ACC_Host_Name_ -r _ACC_Repository_Path_ -a i368,amd64,all --no-check-gpg --dist=default,stable --section=all,main --method https _Repository_Name_

We recommend using debmirror version 2.27 or higher. For ACC host name, repository path, and repository name, see orcharhino Server Offline Installation in the ATIX Service Portal.

Creating Local Operating System Repositories

Depending on the operating systems you want to provision, you also need to synchronize content to allow offline provisioning.

Installing orcharhino Server Offline

After preparing content for the offline installation, you can install orcharhino Server without any network connection other than to your local machine.

Activating Local Repositories

Prerequisites
Procedure

  1. Connect to the host you want to install orcharhino on:

    # ssh root@orcharhino.example.com

  2. Remove all existing repositories:

    # for f in /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-*.repo; do echo "" > "${f}"; done

    Adjust the name of the .repo files according to your operating system.

  3. Copy the orcharhino.repo file to /etc/yum.repos.d/:

    # cp /media/my_disk/my_repos/orcharhino.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/

    The repository file is created when your run ./repolist.py to create the bash helper scripts.

  4. Optional: View all enabled repositories:

    # yum repolist

Installing orcharhino Server in a Disconnected Environment

Prerequisite
Procedure

  1. Start a distro sync:

    # yum distribution-synchronization

  2. Reboot your host:

    # reboot now

  3. Install the orcharhino-installer package:

    # yum install -y orcharhino-installer

  4. Install orcharhino:

    # /usr/share/orcharhino-installer/orcharhino-installer.sh

    If you want to add orcharhino Clients, provide the --clients-base-url='file:///media/my_disk/my_repos/or_clients/' parameter with the path to the orcharhino Client repositories.

    The orcharhino Client repositories need to be readable by Pulp. If SELinux is active, you have to set the context accordingly:

    # chcon -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t -R /media/my_disk/my_repos/or_clients/

    Ensure to follow the directory structure from adding orcharhino Clients manually from the ATIX Service Portal.

    You can skip the graphical installation process by using --skip-gui, in which case you need to provide an answers.yaml file in /etc/orcharhino-installer/ instead.

    For more information, see Installing orcharhino Server Using the install_orcharhino.sh Script in Installing orcharhino Server.

You can now continue with the Main Installation Steps in the orcharhino Installation guide.