How to enable Red Hat Subscription on RHEL 8/7

Red Hat subscription model is a software support model that allows Red Hat to manage their customers.

It allows customers to download Red Hat tested and certified enterprise software packages, patches, updates, and upgrades for Redhat Enterprise Linux.

In addition to software support, customers will also receive technical support for the product and vast knowledge base articles.

Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM) is a customer-driven solution that allows users to track their subscription quantity and consumption.

In this guide, we’ll show how to register or un-register a new Red Hat Enterprise Linux system to the Customer Portal using Red Hat subscription-manager.

Prerequisites

Make sure that you have an Active Red Hat subscription to download Red Hat Enterprise Linux and register your system with Red Hat.

Register and Enable Red Hat subscription

Once you have Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed, you must register and enable Red Hat Subscription to install any package on your system.

If no, you will get the following error message when trying to install any software on the system without registering the system with Red Hat.

# yum repolist

Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Unable to read consumer identify
This system is not registered to Red Hat Subscription Management. You can use subscription-manager to register.
No repositories available

Red Hat subscription can be managed in two ways either a Red Hat Customer Portal or a Red Hat Satellite, but in this guide we will use the Customer Portal to manage the subscription.

Use the ‘subscription-manager’ command to register your computer with Red Hat: This requires the ‘username (email id)’ and ‘password’ used to sign in with the custom portal.

# subscription-manager register

Registering to: subscription.rhsm.redhat.com:443/subscription
Username: [email protected]
Password:
The system has been registered with ID: a234re3a-9hr2-5e4i-3cw0-gpp7xvbm5f65
The registered system name is: rhel8.2daygeek.local

After registration, you need to enable the subscription by running the below command:

# subscription-manager attach --auto

Installed Product Current Status:
Product Name: Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64
Status:       Subscribed

You can register and enable subscription at once by using the below command:

# subscription-manager register --username=[USER_NAME] --password=[PASSWORD] --auto-attach

Whenever you add or change the attached subscription, run: This command refresh the information on your system.

# subscription-manager refresh

Attach a subscription with a specific pool

If you want to attach a subscription with a specific pool, follow the below procedure:

To do so, you should have a “Pool ID” (It’s unique), run the following command to obtain the Pool ID.

# subscription-manager list --available --all

+-------------------------------------------+
    Available Subscriptions
+-------------------------------------------+
Subscription Name:   30 Day Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Self-Supported Evaluation
Provides:            Red Hat Beta
                     Oracle Java (for RHEL Server)
                     Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
                     Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder for x86_64
                     Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64
                     Red Hat Ansible Engine
                     Red Hat Container Images Beta
                     Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host Beta
                     Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host
                     Red Hat Container Images
SKU:                 RH02165
Contract:            11375901
Pool ID:             4r95p77j8jg2w7ro194vmx922b0610x7
Provides Management: No
Available:           2
Suggested:           1
Service Level:       Self-Support
Service Type:        L1-L3
Subscription Type:   Instance Based
Starts:              06/17/2021
Ends:                07/16/2022
System Type:         Physical

To attach a subscription using pool id, run:

# subscription-manager attach --pool=4r95p77j8jg2w7ro194vmx922b0610x7

Successfully attached a subscription for: 30 Day Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Self-Supported Evaluation

Verifying Subscription

List of attached subscription can be verified by running the below command:

# subscription-manager list

+-------------------------------------------+
    Installed Product Status
+-------------------------------------------+
Product Name:   Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64
Product ID:     530
Version:        8.0
Arch:           x86_64
Status:         Subscribed
Status Details:
Starts:         06/17/2021
Ends:           07/16/2022

List enabled YUM repositories

By default, it enables only few core repositories and those can be listed by running the below command:

# yum repolist enabled

repo id                                               repo name                                                                         status
rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms                      Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - AppStream (RPMs)                          5,650
rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - BaseOS (RPMs)                             2,300
repolist: 7,950

To list available repositories, run:

# subscription-manager repos --list

To enable a repository, run: For instance, to enable codeready repository, run:

# subscription-manager repos --enable=codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms

To disable the codeready repository, run:

# subscription-manager repos --disable=codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms

Unregistering a system from the Red Hat

Remove all subscriptions,run:

# subscription-manager remove --all

1 local certificate has been deleted.
1 subscription removed at the server.

To unregister the system from the Red Hat, run:

# subscription-manager unregister

Unregistering from: subscription.rhsm.redhat.com:443/subscription
System has been unregistered.

To remove all local data from the system, run:

# subscription-manager clean
All local data removed

Conclusion

In this guide, we’ve shown you how to enable RHEL Subscription on the Red Hat system.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment below.

About Magesh Maruthamuthu

Love to play with all Linux distribution

View all posts by Magesh Maruthamuthu

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