Preparing provisioning content

You have to configure provisioning content that will be used for installation of the operating system on the provisioned host.

Additional resources

Adding installation media to orcharhino

Installation media are sources of packages that orcharhino Server uses to install a base operating system on a machine from an external repository.

You can view installation media by navigating to Hosts > Provisioning Setup > Installation Media.

Installation media must be in the format of an operating system installation tree and must be accessible from the machine hosting the installer through an HTTP URL.

If you want to improve download performance when using installation media to install operating systems on multiple hosts, you must modify the Path of the installation medium to point to the closest mirror or a local copy.

To use the CLI instead of the orcharhino management UI, see the CLI procedure.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Hosts > Provisioning Setup > Installation Media.

  2. Click Create Medium.

  3. In the Name field, enter a name to represent the installation media entry.

  4. In the Path enter the URL that contains the installation tree. You can use following variables in the path to represent multiple different system architectures and versions:

    • $arch – The system architecture.

    • $version – The operating system version.

    • $major – The operating system major version.

    • $minor – The operating system minor version.

      Example HTTP path:

      http://http://download.example.com/suse_linux_enterprise_server/16.0/

  5. From the Operating system family list, select the distribution or family of the installation medium. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server belongs to the SUSE family.

  6. Click the Organizations and Locations tabs, to change the provisioning context. orcharhino Server adds the installation medium to the set provisioning context.

  7. Click Submit to save your installation medium.

ATIX AG provides file-type repositories for installation media. You can synchronize them to provision hosts in disconnected environments by using local installation media. For a list of upstream URLs, see Using file repositories for installation media for Debian/Ubuntu in the ATIX Service Portal.

ATIX AG provides the following installation media as file-type repository:

  • Debian 13

  • Debian 12

  • Debian 11

  • Debian 10

  • Ubuntu 24.04

  • Ubuntu 22.04

  • Ubuntu 20.04

  • Ubuntu 18.04
CLI procedure

  • Create the installation medium using the hammer medium create command:

    $ hammer medium create \
--locations "My_Location" \
--name "My_Operating_System" \
--organizations "My_Organization" \
--os-family "Suse" \
--path "http://http://download.example.com/suse_linux_enterprise_server/16.0/"

Configuring orcharhino to provision from a Lorax Composer image

In orcharhino, you can enable integration with Cockpit to perform actions and monitor your hosts. Using Cockpit, you can access Lorax Composer and build images. Afterwards, you can use these images to provision hosts.

Additional resources

Provisioning from a Lorax Composer image on orcharhino Proxy

You can upload a Lorax Composer image to orcharhino and use this image to provision hosts by using network boot.

This feature is available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server hosts only.

When you provision from a Lorax Composer image, Anaconda installer partitions disks, downloads and mounts the image, and copies files over to a host.

Prerequisites

  • An existing TAR image created by using Lorax Composer in Cockpit. Ensure that your blueprint to build the image includes the required packages.

  • If you want to use orcharhino Proxy Server URL, then the referenced lifecycle environment, such as Library, must be synchronized to that orcharhino Proxy Server. For more information, see Adding lifecycle environments to orcharhino Proxy Servers in Installing orcharhino Proxy Server.

Procedure

  1. On orcharhino, create a product, add a file type repository to this product, and upload the image to the repository. For more information, see Importing individual ISO images and files in Managing Content.

  2. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Configure > Host Groups.

  3. Select the host group that you want to use.

  4. Click the Parameters tab, and then click Add Parameter.

  5. Create a parameter named kickstart_liveimg with type string and set the value to the full URL of the image location or the file name of the image inside a published content view, for example:

    • Full URL: https://orcharhino-proxy.network2.example.com/pulp/content/My_Organization_Label/Library/custom/My_Product_Label/My_Repository_Label/My_Image_Name.tar

    • Image file name: My_Image_Name.tar

      You can use the image file name only if the host is subscribed to a single content view and lifecycle environment, and the kt_activation_keys parameter is defined for the host. The content view must be published.

      If a content source is assigned to the host, orcharhino will use the content source orcharhino Proxy of the host. If a content source is not assigned, orcharhino will use orcharhino Server.

  6. Click Submit to save your changes.

Additional resources

Provisioning from a Lorax Composer image on an HTTP server

You can upload a Lorax Composer image to an HTTP server and use this image to provision hosts by using network boot.

This feature is available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server hosts only.

When you provision from a Lorax Composer image, Anaconda installer partitions disks, downloads and mounts the image, and copies files over to a host.

Prerequisites

  • An existing TAR image created by using Lorax Composer in Cockpit. Ensure that your blueprint to build the image includes the required packages.

Procedure

  1. Copy the image to an existing HTTP server that your hosts can reach.

  2. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Configure > Host Groups.

  3. Select the host group that you want to use.

  4. Click the Parameters tab, and then click Add Parameter.

  5. Create a parameter named kickstart_liveimg with type string and set the value to the URL of the image location, such as https://webserver.example.com/path/My_Image_Name.tar.

  6. Click Submit to save your changes.

Additional resources

Packages required in a Lorax Composer image

For the use in orcharhino, the Lorax Composer image must contain the following minimum of packages:

  • NetworkManager

  • authselect

  • chrony

  • dnf

  • dracut

  • efibootmgr

  • firewalld

  • grub2

  • grub2-efi

  • grub2-tools-extra

  • insights-client – required only if you plan to use Insights reporting

  • iproute

  • iputils

  • kernel

  • kernel-core

  • lvm2

  • subscription-manager

  • wget

The text and illustrations on this page are licensed by ATIX AG under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International ("CC BY-SA 4.0") license. This page also contains text from the official Foreman documentation which uses the same license ("CC BY-SA 4.0").