How to enable staging content on Satellite 5 client systems?

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Satellite 5.4 or later
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 or later client
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 or later client

Issue

  • How to enable staging content on Red Hat Satellite 5 and client systems?

Resolution

Official Documentation is now available in Red Hat Satellite 5.7 This content is not included.Client Configuration Guide

Enable staging content on Satellite
  • Navigate to Admin > Organization > Your Organization > Configuration
  • Check the option: Enable Staging Contents
Enable staging content on client
  • Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date
  • Make sure content staging is enabled:
stagingContent[comment]=Retrieve content of future actions in advance
stagingContent=1
  • Edit the value of the content staging window as desired:
stagingContentWindow[comment]=How much forward we should look for future actions. In hours
stagingContentWindow=24
  • If these fields are not present in /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date, then the default values are:
stagingContent=0
stagingContentWindow=24

Root Cause

  • Red Hat Bugzilla #1067124 is tracking official Satellite documentation to include this
    Staging Content is a new feature introduced with Red Hat Satellite 5.4 along with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 and 6.1.

With this feature you can still schedule package or errata deployment for a specific time, but now this action will be staged on the client system before installation. Within the 24 hours before scheduled deployment, when the client next checks in to the Satellite, it will download the rpm content onto the local disk of the system. When the time for the scheduled action arrives, the client will update using these locally-cached packages, resulting in faster updates.

This has several benefits:

  • spread out client requests to Red Hat Satellite
  • installation/upgrade of client packages take less time - shorter maintenance windows needed

This feature is disabled by default on the Satellite. The RHEL client default configuration file is enabled. To use Staging Content you have to enable it on both client systems and within Satellite for each Organization using it.

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