• Table of contents
• Requirements for the foreman core component
• Download
  • Puppet Module ready to use
  • Debian/Ubuntu installation by packages
    • Debian Linux 5.0 (Lenny)
  • RPM
    • Puppet
    • Quick and dirty
  • Latest stable release
  • Latest source code
    • Daily snapshot
• Initial setup
  • Configuration
  • Database
  • Import Data from Puppet
  • Start The Web Server
  • Getting your Puppet Reports into Foreman
• Smart proxy installation
  • Download
• Future Updates
• Problems?

Requirements for the foreman core component¶

before you start, make sure you have:

• Puppet >= 0.24-4
• rake >= 0.84
• rubygems
• ruby-sqlite3 (libsqlite3-ruby) if you are going to use sqlite as your database
• git (if installing from source )

The installation has been successfully tested on RHEL[5,6], Fedora[13,14], Debian Linux 5.0 (Lenny) and 6.0 (Squeeze) and Ubuntu Linux 10.04, 10.10, and 11.04. For older operating systems you might need additional packages (e.g. sqlite).

It is also known to work on Solaris and Mac.

Download¶

Puppet Module ready to use¶

You may try out the puppet Foreman module, this should take care for most of the basic setup.

The module could be downloaded via: http://github.com/ohadlevy/puppet-foreman/tarball/master

you may use puppet (if you don't want to add it as a module to your puppetmaster) in the following way:

if you are using RHEL, EPEL repo must be enabled http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

If you are using puppet store configs please set $using_store_configs to true in foreman/manifests/init.pp.
If you want this module to configure passenger as well, set $using_passenger to true in foreman/manifests/init.pp

usage:

echo include foreman | puppet  --verbose --modulepath /path_to/extracted_tarball

Its recommend to review the module prior usage.

Debian/Ubuntu installation by packages¶

The Foreman packages should work on the following Debian-based Linux distributions:

• Debian Linux 5.0 (Lenny), see Installation_instructions
• Debian Linux 6.0 (Squeeze)
• Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)
• Ubuntu Linux 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)
• Ubuntu Linux 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

If you encounter any errors during the installation, please file a bug report!

Add one of the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list (alternatively in a separate file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list):

# Stable packages
deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ stable main

# Testing packages
deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ testing main

# Nightly builds. Beware: HERE BE DRAGONS
deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ nightly main

The public key for secure APT can be downloaded here

You can add this key with

apt-key add foreman.asc

or combine downloading and registering:

wget -q http://deb.theforeman.org/foreman.asc -O- | apt-key add -

The key fingerprint is

1DCB 15D1 2CA1 40EE F494  7E57 66CF 053F E775 FF07
Foreman Archive Signing Key <packages@theforeman.org>

To install Foreman, run

sudo apt-get update

# Depending on the database you want to use with Foreman,
# install one of these meta-packages:
sudo apt-get install foreman-mysql
sudo apt-get install foreman-pgsql
sudo apt-get install foreman-sqlite3

# or install the foreman main package and configure the
# database manually in /etc/foreman/database.yml
sudo apt-get install foreman

The only purpose of the meta-packages foreman-mysql, foreman-pgsql, and foreman-sqlite3 is to pull in any dependencies on the respective database system during the package installation. If you don't want to run the Foreman database on the same host, please use the foreman package and configure the database settings in /etc/foreman/database.yml. You cannot use dbconfig-common in this case.

Debian Linux 5.0 (Lenny)¶

Users of Debian Lenny will have to install rake and libsinatra-ruby from lenny-backports.

See http://backports.debian.org/Instructions/ for instructions on how to add lenny-backports to your list of repositories and install a package from it.

RPM¶

We maintain a repository for RHEL and Fedora (and clones) - you may add it via:

Puppet¶

yumrepo { 'foreman':
    descr => 'Foreman Repo',
    baseurl => 'http://yum.theforeman.org/stable',
    gpgcheck => '0',
    enabled => '1'
}

Quick and dirty¶

cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/foreman.repo << EOF
[foreman]
name=Foreman Repo
baseurl=http://yum.theforeman.org/stable
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
EOF

yum install foreman

if you just want to get the rpms:

http://yum.theforeman.org

Latest stable release¶

Latest stable version can be found under the files section

Latest source code¶

You can get the latest source code of Foreman from the git repository hosted at github.
This is the preferred way to get Foreman if you want to benefit from the latest improvements. By using the git repository you can also upgrade more easily.

to get latest "development" version do:

git clone git://github.com/ohadlevy/foreman.git foreman
cd foreman
git submodule init
git submodule update

• if you are behind a proxy or firewall and dont have access to github using the git protocol, use http protocol instead (e.g.)
  

  git clone http://github.com/ohadlevy/foreman.git foreman
  cd foreman
  sed -i 's/git:\/\//http:\/\//g' .gitmodules
  git submodule init
  git submodule update
  

Daily snapshot¶

You can also fetch the latest daily snapshot of the development version at:
http://theforeman.org/foreman-nightly.tar.bz2

Initial setup¶

Configuration¶

Foreman configuration is managed from two places; a configuration file config/settings.yaml and from the SETTINGS/Foreman Settings page. A full description of the configuration options is given here

Database¶

Foreman uses a database, this database can be shared with Puppet store-configs (they are compatible, as Foreman extends the puppet database schema).
By default, SQLite is used, if you want to use other database (e.g. MySQL) please modify the configuration file under config/database.yml.

If you want to share the database with Puppets (storeconfig), just modify config/database.yml to point to the same database configuration as puppet is.

In both cases, please use the production settings.

to initialize the database schema type:

cd <foreman installation path> && RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate

Import Data from Puppet¶

At this point, you might want to go through the FAQ to see how can you import your data into Foreman.

Start The Web Server¶

if you installed via rpm, just start the foreman service, or start the built in web server by typing:
./script/server -e production

and point your browser to http://foreman:3000

If you would like to keep the server running, its recommend to setup passenger or use the RPM.
example usage with passenger can be found here: http://github.com/ohadlevy/puppet-foreman/blob/master/foreman/templates/foreman-vhost.conf.erb

Getting your Puppet Reports into Foreman¶

Read Puppet_Reports to learn how to get your nodes to report to Foreman.

Smart proxy installation¶

A smart proxy is an autonomous web-based foreman component that is placed on a host performing a specific function in the host commissioning phase.
It receives requests from Foreman to perform operations that are required during the commissioning process and executes them on its behalf. More details can be found on the Foreman Architecture page.

To fully manage the commissioning process then a smart proxy will have to manipulate these services, DHCP, DNS, Puppet CA, Puppet and TFTP. These services may exist on separate machines or several of them may be hosted on the same machine. As each smart proxy instance is capable of managing all the of these services, there is only need for one proxy per host.
In the special case of a smart proxy managing a windows DHCP server, the host machine must be running Windows and support the netsh dhcp utility, it does not need to be the Microsoft DHCP server itself.

see [[Smart-Proxy:Installation_instructions]]

Download¶

Download the smart proxy code from

• the git repository
• the rpm location
• this zip file.

When downloaded, extract into a suitable location and follow the README file.

Future Updates¶

see Upgrade instructions

Problems?¶

see Troubleshooting