Description of problem: The customer is able to use a custom answers file to forcefully enable the debian plugin setting for Satellite 6. The plugin doesn't actually enable, because the packages aren't available, but the _setting_ can be forced this way. However, whenever the satellite-installer or foreman-maintain tools run afterwards, they invariably fail (exit code 6). This includes attempts to _disable_ the debian plugin using this command: # satellite-installer --foreman-proxy-content-enable-deb false Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Satellite 6.9 How reproducible: unclear; we have one example so far Steps to Reproduce: 1. create a custom answer file in /etc/foreman-installer/scenarios.d/ with this option in the "katello:" section: :enable_deb: true 2. run "foreman-maintain packages update" to patch the server; it will fail 3. run "satellite-installer --foreman-proxy-content-enable-deb false"; it will fail Actual results: - disabling the debian plugin is not possible after forcibly enabling it through a custom answer file Expected results: - since red hat satellite doesn't support the debian plugin, we should always be able to turn it off Additional info: The logs suggest that the satellite-installer command tries to install the debian-related pulp packages even when we're just trying to disable the setting. This prevents the Satellite server from being patched, eventually leaving it in an insecure state.
Satellite does not support creating custom answer files and this practice can lead the Satellite to end up in an inconsistent state. As for the failure seen when attempting to configure " --foreman-proxy-content-enable-deb false", please include the output of the failure so that we may assess if this is something we will address on future versions of Satellite.
I was able to help my Satellite 6.9 customer work around this issue by following these steps: # cp /usr/share/foreman-installer/modules/pulp/manifests/install.pp /usr/share/foreman-installer/modules/pulp/manifests/install.pp.bak # vi /usr/share/foreman-installer/modules/pulp/manifests/install.pp Then we commented out these lines: if $pulp::enable_deb { package { ['pulp-deb-plugins']: ensure => $pulp::version, } } So that they looked like these lines: # if $pulp::enable_deb { # package { ['pulp-deb-plugins']: ensure => $pulp::version, } # } Then this command succeeded: # satellite-installer --foreman-proxy-content-enable-deb false
Since this was done via a method that we do not support, and the customer issue has been resolved I am opting to close it.