Spacewalk (software)


Spacewalk is open-source systems management software for system provisioning, patching and configuration licensed under the GNU GPLv2.
The project was discontinued on 31 May 2020 with 2.10 being the last official release. SUSE forked the spacewalk code base in 2018 with uyuni-project
WWW Official Site

Overview

Features

Spacewalk encompasses the following functions:
  • Systems Inventory
  • System Software Installation and Updates
  • Collation and Distribution of Custom Software Packages into Manageable Groups
  • System provisioning
  • Management and deployment of configuration 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 primary and worker servers, and even a tree setup is possible
  • There are options for geographically remote proxy servers
Spacewalk Client: A system managed by a Spacewalk server
Spacewalk is controlled by the following Interfaces:
  • web interface, Used for most interactions
  • CLI, Used for some specific operations
  • XML-RPC API, programmatic interface for specialist/development use
Subscription Management:
Backend Database:

Upstream and downstream versions

A number of DownStream versions use upstream Spacewalk version as the basis of their System Provision, patch and errata management:
Support for particular client OSes, server OSes, system architectures, backend databases, and subscription services varies between versions and releases.

Oracle Spacewalk

Oracle introduced their own version of Spacewalk 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.
Spacewalk for Oracle® Linux is designed to be hosted on Oracle Linux.
Oracle Spacewalk ReleaseDateUpstream ReleaseServer VersionsClient VersionsFeatures
2.0November 20132.0OL 6OL 5, OL 6First Oracle Spacewalk Release
2.2January 20152.2OL 6OL 5, OL 6, OL 7New features related to upstream Spacewalk 2.2
2.4April 20162.4OL 6, OL 7OL 5, OL 6, OL 7Oracle Linux 7 supported
2.6May 20172.6OL 6, OL 7OL 5, OL 6, OL 7taskotop monitor utility and removal of system and software channel entitlements
2.7April 20182.7OL 6, OL 7OL 5, OL 6, OL 7jabberd, deprecated jPackage libraries, and further enhancements
2.10August 20202.10OL 7OL 5, OL 6, OL 7, OL 8Oracle Linux 8 supported

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.
In May 2018, during the openSUSE conference in Prague, it was announced that a fork of Spacewalk, called, was being created. Named after the salt flat in Bolivia, Uyuni uses Salt for configuration management and React as the user interface framework.
From version 4.0, SUSE Manager is based on Uyuni as its upstream project.

History and development

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 Red Hat Satellite 6 Red Hat.
  • Red Hat formally released Spacewalk as open source 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 provided that the community continues to find it a useful tool and is willing to support it.
Satellite 5 went end-of-life on 31 May 2020, the Spacewalk project was discontinued at the same time.

Builds

Upstream build

Releases

ReleaseRelease DateServer VersionSelected features and notes
2.10March 18, 202030, 31Installable on Fedora 30 and 31, bugfix release - Last official release
2.9January 14, 201927, 28, 29Installable on Fedora 29 and can distribute RHEL 8 Beta
2.8April 19, 201826, 27, 28Support PostgresSQL 10
2.7September 26, 201724, 25, 26Taskomatic daemon monitor
2.6November 29, 201623, 24Can sync to Debian/Ubuntu apt repositories
2.5June 8, 201622, 23System entitlements and Software Channels entitlements removed
2.4October 7, 201521, 22More Standardization on PatternFly User Interface
2.3April 14, 201520, 21Solaris support removed
2.2July 16, 201419, 20RHEL7 and CentOS 7 clients supported
2.1March 4, 201419, 20Final Release installable to RHEL 5. Improved OpenSCAP integration.
2.0July 19, 201318, 19Support for external PostgreSQL database
1.9March 5, 201317, 18New reports
1.8November 1, 201216, 17Integration with SUSE Studio
1.7March 7, 201215, 16OpenSCAP integration
1.6December 22, 201115, 16Support for Kickstart Proxy via a CNAME
1.5July 21, 201114, 15AutoYaST Support
1.4April 26, 201113, 14apt-get plug-in support
1.3February 4, 201113, 14
1.2November 19, 201012, 13, 14
1.1August 13, 201012, 13
1.0April 29, 201011, 12Script for re-configuring server
0.8February 16, 201011, 12Support for packages using checksums other than MD5
0.7December 4, 200911, 12
0.6August 7, 200910, 11Yum repo can be imported into a channel
0.5March 31, 200910
0.4January 15, 2009Integration with Cobbler and Koan
0.3November 7, 2008
0.2September 16, 2008Release Announcement
firstJune 17, 2008Initial Release Announcement

Criticisms

In a 2019 paper considering Linux open-source patching tools, Spacewalk was commended for having a software inventory and community support but limited support for distributions; notably, Ubuntu was an issue.

Miscellaneous

  • The is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc.

Note

Resources

ResourceNotes
GitHub Root
Forced move from Fedorahosted.org TRAC from late 2016 and as of February 2017 may have some link discrepancies remaining
Domain Registered by Red Hat but not updated since 2015
User Documentation
Upstream FAQ
Deprecated