Creating the RHSM entitlement certificates

You must create and download certificates through the Red Hat Subscription Management system. From the Red Hat portal, you must register a system then attach your subscriptions (entitlements) to that system.

About this task

This section describes the steps you need to create RHSM certificates through the Red Hat Subscription Management system. This entails registering a system then attaching your subscriptions (entitlements) to that system.

You must have at least one set of certificates that you need to download. You only need to register at least one system and attach the subscriptions (entitlements) to cover your machines.

Note: The System Identity Certificate is no longer required from v1.0.2.0 of the RHSM Download Plug-in and RHSM download Cacher.
Note: Red Hat requires Oracle Java users to enable a new content set to access the Oracle Java SE software. To deploy Oracle Java patches, create separate certificates for Oracle Java (Restricted Maintenance) with the Oracle Java Add-On (Physical or Virtual Nodes) subscription. The steps for creating the certificate and attaching them to a subscription are detailed in this section. For more information about Red Hat requirement to enable the new content set, see the Red Hat Knowledge base site.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the Red Hat Customer Portal at https://access.redhat.com/.
  2. Go to Subscription Allocation page at https://access.redhat.com/management/.
  3. Click on New Subscription Allocation.
    Subscriptions allocation page
  4. Add Name and select Type for the Subscription Allocation and click Create. Type can be Subscription Asset Manager 1.x.
    Create a new subscription allocation

    New subscription allocation successfully created
  5. Click the Subscriptions tab and then click Add Subscriptions.
    Add subscriptions in Subscriptions tab
  6. Choose subscriptions to add by selecting the quantity in the Entitlements column. Once done, click Submit.
    Add subscriptions to the allocation
  7. After subscriptions are added successfully, the Manifest will be available for export. Click Export Manifest to download the Manifest archive.
    Subscriptions added successfully, export Manifest
  8. Unzip the downloaded certificate/exported manifest and its content. Red Hat now uses a single certificate instead of the earlier RHSM version which required having both an entitlement certificate and an identity certificate.
    Unzip exported manifest
    Note: Ensure that your Red Hat subscriptions are active to avoid errors.
  9. Go to <BES Server>\DownloadPlugins\RHSMProtocol\certs and create a folder. Place the unzipped certificates in the newly-created folder. Ensure that your Red Hat subscriptions are active to avoid errors.
    Note: In the plugin.ini, the "rootCertDir" value should be "certs", which is the default value. This is the relative path from the RHSMDownloadPlugin.exe to the rootCertDir called "certs".

    You can run verify access to the repos when you run RHSMPlugin.exe --check-baserepos. For more information, see the Verifying RHSM download plug-in certificate access to Red Hat repositories section.