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There are several things specific to our environment which the Red Hat installer does not normally take into account. On automated installs, these are taken care of by various settings within the ks.cfg. But, on a manual install, these are setup during the Firstboot process that walks you through RealmConfig In addition, there are times in which you will want to change some of these things, which this section attempts to give you the information on how to do.
Most of the tasks described can be done through the /usr/sbin/realmconfig command. I will describe most of the Realm Linux specific configuration in this section. For overlay installs, changing parts of the default behavior, and the curious this section is very informative. All of these tasks must be done as root, the superuser.
Before your machine can receive security updates of any kind it must be registerd with the Red Hat Network. This is the only way to receive updates and is also how the licenses are counted for.
![[Warning]](/images/warning.png) | Warning |
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Your machine must be registered with the Red Hat Network through NCSU's RHN Proxy server. Otherwise your machine is a risk to the security of the campus network. Your machine will be blocked from network access on the first signs of compromise. |
When automated installs are done via the Web-Kickstart system your machines will automatically be registered for you and there is nothing more for you to do in this step. However, using any other method to install your machine your client will not be registered. You will also need to configure your machine to contact the Red Hat Network through our RHN Proxy server. [3] Fortunately, there is a simple command to do this.
# /usr/sbin/rhnreg_ks --serverUrl https://rhn.linux.ncsu.edu/XMLRPC \ --sslCACert /usr/share/rhn/RHN-ORG-TRUSTED-SSL-CERT \ --username XXXX --password XXXX
Here, I have used the backslash to break the command up into several lines. The graphical interface for registering machines envoked by up2date, unfortunately, does not have all the options needed to set the alternate RHN server and SSL certificate.
Lastly, the machine needs to be subscribed to the Realm Linux sub-channels to have access to NCSU's customized packages. To do this you will need to login to your Red Hat Network account at rhn.redhat.com. You can use the search option at the top of the page to the current machine quickly. Once you have found your machine click on the "Channels" link (not the tab at the top). You will see a Realm Linux sub channel or two. Click on the proper checkboxes and then on "Change Subscriptions."