Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Spacewalk (software)

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Original author(s)
  
Red Hat

Written in
  
Java, Perl and Python

Initial release
  
June 2008

Operating system
  
Linux

Stable release
  
2.6 / November 29, 2016; 3 months ago (2016-11-29)

Available in
  
English, Francais, Bengali, Hindi, Japanese, Punjabi, Russian, Simplified Chinese, German, Spanish, Gujarati, Italian, Korean, Brazilian, Portuguese, Tamil, Traditional Chinese

Spacewalk is an open-source systems management solution for system provisioning, patching and configuration licensed under GNU General Public License v2. It is constructed from free and open source software (FOSS) Components.

Contents

Features

Spacewalk encompasses the following functions:

  • Systems Inventory (Hardware and Software)
  • System Software Installation and Updates
  • Collation and Distribution of Custom Software Packages into Manageable Groups
  • System provisioning (via Kickstart)
  • Management and deployment of configuation files
  • Provision of virtual Guests
  • Start/Stop/Configuration of virtual guests
  • OpenSCAP Auditing of client systems

    • Architecture

    Spacewalk Server: Server represents managing System

  • It is possible to set up master and slave servers, and even a tree setup is possible
  • There are options for geographically remote remote proxy servers

    • Spacewalk Client: A system managed by a Spacewalk server

  • Compatible Client OS's are drawn from:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
  • Fedora (operating system)
  • Oracle Linux (OL)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)
  • openSUSE
  • Scientific Linux
  • Solaris (operating system) - Limited and depreciated Support
  • Debian - Limited Support

    • Spacewalk is controlled by the following Interfaces:

  • web interface, Used for most interactions
  • CLI (Command-line interface), Used for some specific operations
  • XMLRPC API Interface, programmatic interface for specialist/development use

    • Subscription Management:

  • Particular upstream and downstream versions may include integration to supported vendor subscription support network such as Red Hat Network(RHN) and ULN and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server Subscriptions

    • Backend Database:

  • While formerly requiring the commercial Oracle Database as a backend, version 1.7 (released in March 2012) added support for PostgreSQL.

    • Upstream and downstream versions

    A number of downstream versions use upstream Spacewalk version as the basis of their System Provision, patch and errata management:

  • Red Hat Satellite 5.x
  • Oracle's "Spacewalk for Oracle® Linux"
  • SUSE® Manager Server

    • Support for particular client OS, server OS, system architecture, Backend Databases and subscription services varies between versions and releases.

    Development

    Red Hat developed the Red Hat Network to manage subscriptions software management and created the Red Hat Satellite application as a central management point with the user network.

    For Red Hat Satellite version 5 the Satellite Function was implemented by a toolset named Project Spacewalk.

    Red Hat announced in June 2008 Project Spacewalk was to be made open source under the GPLv2 License

    Satellite 5.3 was the first version to be based on upstream Spacewalk code.

    Stewardship and governance

    In the Spacewalk FAQ issued in 2015 after the release of Redhat Satellite 6 Red Hat.

  • Red Hat formally released Spacewalk as open source(GPLv2) in June 2008
  • Red Hat continues to sponsor and support Spacewalk as the upstream Red Hat Satellite 5. however that participation is anticipated to diminish as Red Hat Satellite 5 enters the final phases of its lifecycle. Spacewalk is not and can never be upstream for Red Hat Satellite 6 released in September 2014 due to it being a ground up rebuild with a different toolset.
  • The Spacewalk project can continue to grow and flourish providing the community continue to find it a useful tool and a willing to support it.

    • Oracle Spacewalk

    Oracle Spacewalk was introduced particularly to provide a familiar alternative for those switching from a different vendor while Oracle Enterprise Manager remains Oracle Corporation's preferred way of managing systems

    Oracle's spacewalk server is designed to be hosted on Oracle Linux (OL).

    The about section of the release notes in Oracle Spacewalk 2.x Documentation indicate only minor branding changes and changes for GPG keys

    Red Hat Satellite 5

    Red Hat Satellite 5 is a licensed downstream adaption of Spacewalk with added functionality to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux Subscriptions. In the active years of the Red Hat Satellite 5 lifecycle Spacewalk was simply known as the upstream project for Satellite. The relationship between Spacewalk and Red Hat Satellite 5 was analogous to the relationship between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With the emergence of Red Hat Satellite 6 with based on a fundamentally different toolset, end of lifecycle phase of Red Hat Satellite 5 and the emergence of downstream spacewalk based offerings from Oracle and SUSE newer versions of Spacewalk may not have this close relationship.

    SUSE Manager Server

    In March 2011 Novell released SUSE Manager 1.2, based on Spacewalk 1.2 and supporting the management of both SUSE Linux Enterprise and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

    As of February 2017 the current version of SUSE Manager is SUSE Manager 3.

    SUSE Manager 3 is based upon Spacewalk 2.4. SUSE Manager 3 extends Spacewalk and incorporates integrates other components. Subscription Management Capabilities for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are supported.

    Miscellaneous

  • The Spacewalk logo is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc.

    • References

    Spacewalk (software) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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