Quickstart Guide

The Foreman installer is a collection of Puppet modules that installs everything required for a full working Foreman setup. It uses native OS packaging (e.g. RPM and .deb packages) and adds necessary configuration for the complete installation.

Components include the Foreman web UI, Smart Proxy, a Puppet server, and optionally TFTP, DNS and DHCP servers. It is configurable and the Puppet modules can be read or run in “no-op” mode to see what changes it will make.

Supported platforms

• CentOS 7 x86_64
• CentOS 8 x86_64
• CentOS 8 Stream x86_64
• Debian 10 (Buster), amd64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, x86_64
• Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal), amd64

Untested platforms (packages may not work on these)

These platforms are not tested by automatic installations. They are generally close to supported platforms so the packages may work, but additional work may be needed. For any queries for these platforms raise a question in discourse support section

• Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux, x86_64

Other operating systems will need to use alternative installation methods (see the manual).

The installation will require 4GB of memory, see System Requirements for more information.

Installation

The Foreman installer uses Puppet (6 or later required) to install Foreman. This guide assumes that you have a newly installed operating system, on which the installer will setup Foreman, a Puppet server, and the Smart Proxy by default. It’s not advisable to follow the steps below on an existing system, since the installer will affect the configuration of several components.

Select operating system

To provide specific installation instructions, please select your operating system: -- select operating system -- CentOS 7 CentOS 8 CentOS 8 Stream Scientific Linux or Oracle Linux 7 Debian 10 (Buster) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal)

Repositories

sudo yum-config-manager --enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms

sudo yum -y install https://yum.puppet.com/puppet6-release-el-7.noarch.rpm

sudo yum -y install https://yum.puppet.com/puppet6-release-el-8.noarch.rpm

sudo yum -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
sudo yum -y install https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/3.1/el7/x86_64/foreman-release.rpm

sudo yum-config-manager --enable extras
sudo yum -y install epel-release centos-release-scl-rh
sudo yum -y install https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/3.1/el7/x86_64/foreman-release.rpm

sudo yum -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
sudo yum -y install https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/3.1/el7/x86_64/foreman-release.rpm
sudo yum -y install https://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/extras/x86_64/Packages/centos-release-scl-rh-2-3.el7.centos.noarch.rpm

sudo dnf -y module reset ruby
sudo dnf -y module enable ruby:2.7

sudo yum -y install https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/3.1/el8/x86_64/foreman-release.rpm

sudo apt-get -y install ca-certificates
cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet6-release-buster.deb
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/puppet6-release-buster.deb

echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ buster 3.1" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ plugins 3.1" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
sudo apt-get -y install ca-certificates gpg
wget -q https://deb.theforeman.org/pubkey.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-get -y install ca-certificates
cd /tmp && wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet6-release-focal.deb
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/puppet6-release-focal.deb

echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ focal 3.1" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ plugins 3.1" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
sudo apt-get -y install ca-certificates
wget -q https://deb.theforeman.org/pubkey.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Downloading the installer

sudo yum -y install foreman-installer

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install foreman-installer

Running the installer

The installation run is non-interactive, but the configuration can be customized by supplying any of the options listed in foreman-installer --help, or by running foreman-installer -i for interactive mode. More examples are given in the Installation Options section. Adding -v will disable the progress bar and display all changes. To run the installer, execute:

sudo foreman-installer

After it completes, the installer will print some details about where to find Foreman and the Smart Proxy. Output should be similar to this:

  * Foreman is running at https://theforeman.example.com
      Initial credentials are admin / 3ekw5xtyXCoXxS29
  * Foreman Proxy is running at https://theforeman.example.com:8443
  The full log is at /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman-installer.log

Next-generation documentation

Over the last year, Foreman community members have been open-sourcing Red Hat documentation to make more comprehensive guides available to Foreman users. At the moment, the following guides have been migrated to a work-in-progress Foreman and Katello documentation site. This project is not yet complete, but you might find useful information in some of the following guides:

• Provisioning Guide
• Administering Foreman Guide
• Managing Hosts Guide
• Content Management Guide
• Configuring Smart Proxies with a Load Balancer

More quickstart resources…

Continue reading the quickstart guide in the manual:

• Quickstart: Puppet management

Or view the quickstart screencasts:

• Quickstart screencasts

Additional reading…

• Manual installation and further reading
• More installation options and scenarios