Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 134884
Registration of a new RHEL3 computer is confusing.
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:07:04 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040806 Description of problem: At TRIUMF, we are almost exclusively a "Red Hat" linux shop (a mix of 7.x, 8.0, 9 and Fedora), but this is my first exposure to the RH "Enterprise 3" linux, and I see a problem with registering a brand new Dell machine with the RHN. This is what happens: After booting the brand new Dell machine (RHEL3 preinstalled by Dell) and logging in as root, I click on the blinking red "!" RHN icon. The RHN applet starts up and nicely guides me through "do this, do that" screens, contacts RHN, logs into my RHN account, registers my system, etc... All good, until I hit a dead end: an "up2date registration" screen sais "This system has been successfully registered, but the channel subscriptions were exhausted" and the "Forward >" button is grayed out. Dead end: no gui buttons to push except "Cancel" and "< Back"; no visible instructions on what to do next. Now, I am holding in my hands my "Red Hat(R) Service Activation Card" with the 16 hex digit "Product ID" printed on it, but what do I do with it?!? How do I tell RHN "here is my subscription entitlement!" ?!? I expected that the RHN registration gui would eventually ask me "please enter your activation key here: ", but it did not. The printed text on the "activation card" does not have any activation instructions either. This failure of the first-impression "user interface" and "user experience" is very bad and should be fixed ASAP (Why? Read up Nielsen at http://www.useit.com). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Buy a RHEL3WS kit 2. Install it on a new box 3. Try to register Actual Results: Cannot register with RHN: RHN thinks that my RHEL3 is pirated. Expected Results: RHN registration process should ask me for the "product activation ID" and register my subscription entitlement. Additional info:
FWIW you can go to http://www.redhat.com/now and enter the activation code before you try to register the new system with rhn and it should work.
This bug is filed against RHEL 3, which is in maintenance phase. During the maintenance phase, only security errata and select mission critical bug fixes will be released for enterprise products. Since this bug does not meet that criteria, it is now being closed. For more information of the RHEL errata support policy, please visit: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ If you feel this bug is indeed mission critical, please contact your support representative. You may be asked to provide detailed information on how this bug is affecting you.