Release Notes
orcharhino 6.8.0 is here!
Tech Update Video
A short overview of the new features introduced in orcharhino 6.8
Highlights
Simple Content Access (SCA)
- Simple Content Access is supported and simplifies content management in orcharhino.
- With SCA enabled, you no longer have to assign product subscriptions to hosts. Instead, the available content for hosts is defined by your content view and activation key.
- orcharhino 6.8 changes the default for SCA from “off” to “enabled”.
- In future versions, SCA will be the only available and supported form of content management.
- For more information: https://orcharhino.com/simple-content-access.
Performance Improvements
- Content View API/UI performance is improved by reducing the amount of necessary API calls.
- Debian content synchronization is now skipped if the repository metadata has not changed when using the default sync options.
- Previously this only worked when using “Mirroring Policy: Additive”.
- This will significantly reduce the number of parallel tasks required when synchronizing deb type content to orcharhino Proxy.
orcharhino Clients
- Additional PPC64LE clients for orcharhino is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5.
- For more information, see orcharhino Clients gen2 in the ATIX Service Portal.
Core Component Updates
- orcharhino 6.8 is based on Foreman 3.9, Katello 4.11, and Pulp 3.39.
- orcharhino 6.8 can receive facts and reports from external Puppet Server 8.
Activation Keys Page with SCA enabled.
Manage Organizations with and without SCA enabled.
Changelog Features
- Added support for VMware hardware versions 20 (ESXi 8.0) and 21 (ESXi 8.0 U2).
- Updated the VMware GuestOS mappings to reflect current Enterprise Linux systems.
- For Red Hat Enterprise Linux, to ensure compliance you can utilize the rh-cloud and virt-who plugins for subscription tracking.
- Enabled MQTT port for Pull Provider communication in firewalld configurations on orcharhino Server and orcharhino Proxies.
- Implemented bookmark functionality on the “Repositories” tab within the “Content View” page in the orcharhino management UI.
- Extended or_smart_proxy_content ansible role to support Simple Content Access.
- Extended examples added to the usage-output of the pulp_api.sh script.
- Enabled orcharhino offline installations without OCC access by introducing a “–skip-packages-update” flag to orcharhino-installer.sh.
- Debian public GPG key location moved to “/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/” directory, replacing the deprecated “apt-key add” method.
- Integrated search examples into the orcharhino management UI. For a detailed guide, visit https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/guides/administering_orcharhino.html#Query_Values_admin.
- Enhanced API documentation for operatingsystem/:id/bootfiles endpoint.
- For Debian, improved katello_apt_repo_signing role to retain the signing keys by default, even after changing the hostname.
- orcharhino 6.8 switched to Redis as the default cache type. This improves performance and avoids issues like file locking and cache misses.
- Added a new report template for “New Host – Installed Products” which works for organizations using SCA. It includes information on installed products and system purpose fields without subscription consumption data.
- Implemented incremental content exports with a syncable format. This feature is exclusively available for RPM repositories.
- Enabling hosts to register with multiple Content Views and environments using subscription-manager version 1.29.28 or later in EL8.
- Enhanced the “Host – Applied Errata” report template to include support for Erratum release date.
- Implemented Content View Publish recommendations in orcharhino, signaling whether a publish is unnecessary due to changes in repositories and filters.
- Introduced new UI icons to signify if publishing a new version is required for updates.
- Content View Versions with applied filters now feature a new flag in the UI. Additionally, filters applied to previous Content View Versions are accessible via the API and Hammer CLI.
- Added Alternate Content Sources bulk refresh option. Now “hammer alternate-content-source refresh” command includes the “–all” flag.
Changelog Bugfixes
- Fixed a bug that prevented “Organization admins” to select from all available job listings.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Salt from being installed in some circumstances.
- Resolved an apt issue on Ubuntu causing unintended removal of Linux kernel packages during orcharhino client installation due to missing dependencies.
- Resolved a problem with VSphere host failing to detach ISO during bootdisk-based deployment.
- Resolved an issue where packages of module stream repositories from different Enterprise Linux Distributions (e.g., RHEL and Oracle) were missing when they were synchronized at the same time.
- The katello:delete_orphaned_content rake task now successfully handles orphaned content referenced by non-orphaned content, preventing failures.
- Repository synchronization for Debian content no longer triggers warnings about “python3-apt” not being installed.
- Repository links now correctly redirect from the SUSE Subscriptions page to the corresponding Katello repository page.
- Corrected the date selection in the orcharhino management UI for the errata filter.
- Visibility of the Content Packages Tab is no longer dependent on predefined OS descriptions; now accessible independently.
- Proxmox users can now successfully create hosts using the API or Hammer CLI.
- Fixed a bug that prevented image-based deployments on Proxmox via cloud-init.
- Corrected installation procedure for the pull provider service during host provisioning on Debian/Ubuntu systems.
- Increased download timeout during orcharhino installations to accommodate slower internet connections.
- orcharhino OVA now ships with an updated AlmaLinux 8 version, addressing issues arising from the recent GPG key change (https://almalinux.org/blog/2023-12-20-almalinux-8-key-update).
- orcharhino OVA’s configuration profiles now meet the minimal requirements specified for orcharhino-installer’s tuning profiles.
- Python content synchronization is now supported when the orcharhino Server is behind an HTTP proxy.
- Corrected misnamed ansible roles used for automating orcharhino, resolving UI error messages.
- Cloned hostgroups now correctly retain the content source and lifecycle environment settings.
- Moved the orcharhino subscription key file to the subscription key directory at a later stage, enabling easier re-run of the installer in case of previous failures.
- You can now utilize the SSH User specified in the advanced field of job invocation as the ‘ansible_user’.
- Transitioned to utilizing the “dnf needs-restarting” command to determine tracer information on EL8/EL9 hosts.
Deprecations
- You can no longer create Content Views with “Import Only” enabled.
- You can no longer use Puppet 6 to configure hosts.
- The katello-agent has been removed and is no longer available via web UI, API, or CLI.
- Simple Content Access will be the only subscription management available in a future orcharhino release.
Changelog Documentation
- Added documentation for subscriptions for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Simple Content Access (SCA) on orcharhino 6.8. For more information, see https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/guides/red_hat_enterprise_linux/rhel_subscriptions_and_sca.html.
- Added documentation on how to use custom snippets during host registration. For more information, see https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/guides/almalinux/managing_hosts/registering_hosts.html#Customizing_the_Registration_Templates_managing-hosts.
- Added documentation on how to connect orcharhino with external DHCP, DNS, and TFTP services. For more information, see https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/guides/configuring_external_services.html.
- orcharhino documentation now contains a procedure to install oVirt plug-in on orcharhino Server. For more information, see https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/guides/debian/provisioning_hosts/ovirt.html#installing-the-oVirt-plug-in_rhv-provisioning.
- Added documentation on how to setup Route53 DNS on orcharhino Proxies. For more information, see https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/installation_and_maintenance/installing_orcharhino_proxy.html#configuring_dns_route53_orcharhino-proxy.
- Added documentation on how to enable BMC on orcharhino Server and orcharhino Proxies to control the power state of bare-metal hosts. For more information, see https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/guides/almalinux/managing_hosts/adding_network_interfaces.html#Adding_a_Baseboard_Management_Controller_Interface_managing-hosts.
- Documented orcharhino Server upgrades in disconnected environments. For more information, see https://docs.orcharhino.com/or/docs/sources/installation_and_maintenance/upgrading_orcharhino_server_offline.html.
- Updated documentation to display the repository name for content required by orcharhino Proxies in accordance with the name provided by OCC.
- Added a hint to documentation to either set Content Source, a Lifecycle Environment, and a Content View or leave all three fields empty if host receive content from orcharhino Server.
