Satellite 6 installation fails with error: Unable to detect features ([Errno::ECONNREFUSED]: Failed to open TCP connection to satellite.example.com:9090)

Environment

• Red Hat Satellite 6

Issue

• Satellite installer fails with an error during Capsule (foreman-proxy) registration. The installer reports:

    Error making POST request to Foreman at https://satellite.example.com/api/v2/smart_proxies:
    Unable to communicate with the Capsule: ERF12-2530 [ProxyAPI::ProxyException]:
    Unable to detect features ([Errno::ECONNREFUSED]: Failed to open TCP connection to satellite.example.com:9090 (Connection refused))
  

Resolution

• Backup the Satellite installer answers file:

    cp -p /etc/foreman-installer/scenarios.d/satellite-answers.yaml /etc/foreman-installer/scenarios.d/satellite-answers.yaml.bak-$(date +%F-%H%M)
  

• Modify the answers file used for Satellite installation to change the bind_host parameter in the foreman_proxy section to this:

    bind_host:
     - "*"     
  

• This parameter may also exist in /etc/foreman-proxy/settings.yml:

    # Host or IP to bind ports to (e.g. *, localhost, 0.0.0.0, ::, 192.168.1.20)
    :bind_host: '*'
  

• Re-run the installer:

    satellite-installer
  

• For more KB articles/solutions related to Red Hat Satellite 6.x Installation/Upgrade/Update Issues, please refer to the Red Hat Satellite Consolidated Troubleshooting Article for Red Hat Satellite 6.x Installation/Upgrade/Update Issues.

Root Cause

• The foreman-proxy service was not listening on the expected port (9090).

• The answers file contained the following stanza:

    foreman_proxy:
      repo: 
      gpgcheck: true
      version: present
      ensure_packages_version: present
      bind_host:
      - "::"       <==============
      http_port: 8000
      ssl_port: 9090
  

• This setting restricted the proxy service to a single IP. Requests to localhost or the FQDN (resolving to a different interface) were refused, leading to failed communication on port 9090.

Diagnostic Steps

• The Satellite installation will fail with the error:

    Failed to open TCP connection to satellite.example.com:9090 (Connection refused - connect(2)
  

• You will see the following error message in the satellite.log:

    [ERROR 2021-01-20T09:21:09 main]  Proxy satellite.example.com cannot be registered: Unable to communicate with the Capsule: ERF12-2530                 [ProxyAPI::ProxyException]: Unable to detect features ([Errno::ECONNREFUSED]: Failed to open TCP connection to satellite.example.com:9090 (Connection refused - connect(2) for "satellite.example.com" port 9090)) for Capsule https://satellite.example.com:9090/v2/features Please check the Capsule is configured and running on the host.
  

• You may be able to communicate with the capsule on port 9090 using IPv6, but not IPv4:

    [root@satellite ~]# telnet localhost4.localdomain4 9090
    Trying 127.0.0.1...
    telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused
    [root@satellite ~]# telnet localhost6.localdomain6 9090
    Trying ::1...
    Connected to localhost6.localdomain6.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    ^]
    telnet> q
    Connection closed.
  

• You may see that the ruby process is only listening on port 9090 via IPv6:

    [root@satellite ~]# netstat -tulpen | grep 9090
    tcp6       0      0 :::9090                 :::*                    LISTEN      995        27033      1128/ruby          
  

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