Spacewalk (software) explained

Spacewalk
Author:	Red Hat
Released:	June 2008
Discontinued:	yes
Latest Release Version:	2.10
Repo:	https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk
Programming Language:	Java, Perl and Python
Operating System:	Linux
Language:	English, French, Bengali, Hindi, Japanese, Punjabi, Russian, Simplified Chinese, German, Spanish, Gujarati, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Tamil, Traditional Chinese
Genre:	Systems management
License:	GNU General Public License v2

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.^[1] SUSE forked the spacewalk code base in 2018 with uyuni-project ^[2]

Overview

Features

Spacewalk encompasses the following functions:^[3]

• Systems Inventory (Hardware and Software)
• System Software Installation and Updates^[4]
• Collation and Distribution of Custom Software Packages into Manageable Groups
• System provisioning (via Kickstart)
• Management and deployment of configuration files
• Provision of virtual Guests
• Start/Stop/Configuration of virtual guests
• OpenSCAP Auditing of client systems^[5]

Architecture

Spacewalk Server: Server represents managing System

• It is possible to set up primary and worker servers, and even a tree setup is possible^[6]
• There are options for geographically remote proxy servers^[7]

Spacewalk Client: A system managed by a Spacewalk server

• Compatible Client OS's are drawn from:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
    • CentOS
    • Fedora
    • Scientific Linux
    • Oracle Linux (OL)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)
    • openSUSE
  • Solaris – limited and deprecated 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
• XML-RPC API,^[8] 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 Subscription Management (RHSM), ULN,^[9] 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.^[10]

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 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.^[11]

Spacewalk for Oracle® Linux is designed to be hosted on Oracle Linux (OL).

Oracle Spacewalk Release^[12]	Date	Upstream Release	Server Versions	Client Versions	Features
2.0	November 2013	2.0	OL 6	OL 5, OL 6	First Oracle Spacewalk Release
2.2	January 2015^[13]	2.2	OL 6	OL 5, OL 6, OL 7^[14]	New features related to upstream Spacewalk 2.2
2.4	April 2016	2.4	OL 6, OL 7	OL 5, OL 6, OL 7	Oracle Linux 7 supported
2.6	May 2017^[15]	2.6	OL 6, OL 7	OL 5, OL 6, OL 7	taskotop monitor utility and removal of system and software channel entitlements
2.7	April 2018^[16]	2.7	OL 6, OL 7	OL 5, OL 6, OL 7	jabberd, deprecated jPackage libraries, and further enhancements
2.10	August 2020^[17]	2.10	OL 7	OL 5, OL 6, OL 7, OL 8	Oracle 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^[18]

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.^[19]

In May 2018, during the openSUSE conference in Prague, it was announced^{[20] [21]} that a fork of Spacewalk, called Uyuni, 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.^[22]

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^[23]

Satellite 5.3 was the first version to be based on upstream Spacewalk code.^[24]

Stewardship and governance

In the Spacewalk FAQ^[25] issued in 2015 after the release of Red Hat 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^{[26] [27]} 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,^[28] the Spacewalk project was discontinued at the same time.

Builds

Upstream build

Releases

Release	Release Date	Server Version	Selected features and notes
	March 18, 2020	30, 31	^[29] Installable on Fedora 30 and 31, bugfix release - Last official release
	January 14, 2019	27, 28, 29	^[30] Installable on Fedora 29 and can distribute RHEL 8 Beta
	April 19, 2018	26, 27, 28	^[31] Support PostgresSQL 10
	September 26, 2017	24, 25, 26	^[32] Taskomatic daemon monitor
	November 29, 2016	23, 24	^[33] Can sync to Debian/Ubuntu apt repositories
	June 8, 2016	22, 23	^[34] System entitlements and Software Channels entitlements removed
	October 7, 2015	21, 22	^[35] More Standardization on PatternFly User Interface
	April 14, 2015	20, 21	^[36] Solaris support removed
	July 16, 2014	19, 20	^[37] RHEL7 and CentOS 7 clients supported
	March 4, 2014	19, 20	^[38] Final Release installable to RHEL 5. Improved OpenSCAP integration.
	July 19, 2013	18, 19	^[39] Support for external PostgreSQL database
	March 5, 2013	17, 18	^[40] New reports
	November 1, 2012	16, 17	^[41] Integration with SUSE Studio
	March 7, 2012	15, 16	^[42] OpenSCAP integration
	December 22, 2011	15, 16	^[43] Support for Kickstart Proxy via a CNAME
	July 21, 2011	14, 15	^[44] AutoYaST Support
	April 26, 2011	13, 14	^[45] apt-get plug-in support
	February 4, 2011	13, 14	^[46]
	November 19, 2010	12, 13, 14	^[47]
	August 13, 2010	12, 13	^[48]
	April 29, 2010	11, 12	^[49] Script for re-configuring server
	February 16, 2010	11, 12	^[50] Support for packages using checksums other than MD5
	December 4, 2009	11, 12	^[51]
	August 7, 2009	10, 11	^[52] Yum repo can be imported into a channel
	March 31, 2009	10	^[53]
	January 15, 2009		^[54] Integration with Cobbler and Koan
	November 7, 2008		^[55]
	September 16, 2008		^[56] Release Announcement
	June 17, 2008		^[57] Initial 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.^[58]

Miscellaneous

• The Spacewalk logo is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc.^[59]

External links

Resources

Resource	Notes
Project GitHub Home	GitHub Root
GitHub Wiki	Forced move from Fedorahosted.org TRAC from late 2016^[60] ^[61] ^[62] and as of February 2017 may have some link discrepancies remaining
Official Project Home	Domain Registered by Red Hat but not updated since 2015 (accessed January 2017)
User Documentation	User Documentation
FAQ	Upstream FAQ
Deprecated FedoraHosted Wiki	Deprecated

• • GitHub.com repository for Spacewalk
• Upstream GitHub documentation Wiki
• Spacewalk Upstream User Documentation
• Spacewalk on Fedorahosted.org (Deprecated)
• Documentation for Red Hat Satellite 5.7 - Contains much Generally relevant for Spacewalk
• Oracle Spacewalk Documentation - Generally useful Reference
• SUSE Manager 3 Documentation

Notes and References

1. Web site: GitHub Spacewalkproject Home. . 2020-06-28. 2020-06-02.
2. Web site: Uyuni: Forking Spacewalk with Salt and Containers. 2020-11-12. 2020-11-12.
3. Web site: GitHub Spacewalkproject Home. . 2017-02-01. 2017-01-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20190716135351/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki. 2019-07-16. live.
4. Book: Vora, Zeal. Enterprise Cloud Security and Governance. Packt. 9781788298513. 29 December 2017. Pentest & Patch Management.
5. Web site: OpenSCAP Auditing of client systems. docs.oracle.com. 2017-02-01.
6. Web site: Configuring Inter-Server Synchronization. docs.oracle.com. 2017-02-02.
7. Web site: Installing and Upgrading Spacewalk Proxies. docs.oracle.com. 2017-02-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20171107033511/https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E39368_01/E71077/html/swk22-proxy-instup.html. 2017-11-07. live.
8. Web site: Spacewalk API FAQ. 2017-01-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20170202235145/http://www.spacewalkproject.org/documentation/api/2.6/faqs.html. 2017-02-02. live.
9. Web site: Introduction to Using Oracle Unbreakable Linux Network. Oracle Linux Blog. 2015-02-25. 2017-02-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20160809015849/https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/introduction_to_using_oracle_s. 2016-08-09. live.
10. Web site: PostgreSQL – spacewalk . Fedorahosted.org . 2012-03-07 . 2012-10-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130908012604/https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/PostgreSQL . 2013-09-08 . live .
11. Web site: Spacewalk 2.0 provided to manage Oracle Linux systems. Senior Vice President of Linux and Virtualization Engineering. 2013-11-13. 2017-01-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20160701021618/https://blogs.oracle.com/wim/entry/spacewalk_2_0_provided_to. 2016-07-01. live.
12. Web site: Oracle Linux Manager. docs.oracle.com.
13. Web site: Friday Spotlight: Spacewalk 2.2 on public yum and Oracle Instant Client on ULN. Oracle's Linux Blog. 2017-02-07. 2015-01-30. https://web.archive.org/web/20170207192807/https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/friday_spotlight_spacewalk_2_2. 2017-02-07. live.
14. Web site: Spacewalk client released for Oracle Linux 7. Oracle's Linux Blog. 2017-02-01. 2014-11-04. https://web.archive.org/web/20150910174556/https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/spacewalk_client_released_for_oracle. 2015-09-10. live.
15. Web site: Announcing the release of Spacewalk 2.6. Miller. Avi. 8 May 2017. 24 February 2018.
16. Web site: Announcing the release of Spacewalk 2.7. Miller. Avi. 16 Apr 2017. 26 September 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180926173357/https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/announcing-the-release-of-spacewalk-27. 26 September 2018. live.
17. Web site: Announcing the release of Spacewalk 2.10 for Oracle Linux. Miller. Avi. 5 August 2020. 5 August 2020.
18. Web site: Oracle Spacewalk Documentation Home. oracle.com. 2017-01-30. https://web.archive.org/web/20171020192538/https://linux.oracle.com/documentation/spacewalk/. 2017-10-20. live.
19. Web site: Novell Rolls Out Advanced Linux Systems Management Solution . Novell.com . 2011-03-03 . 2012-10-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121009012502/http://www.novell.com/news/press/2011/2/novell-rolls-out-advanced-linux-systems-management-solution.html . 2012-10-09 . live .
20. Web site: Uyuni: Forking Spacewalk with Salt and Containers. 2018-08-23. 2018-05-26. https://web.archive.org/web/20180826085720/https://news.opensuse.org/2018/05/26/uyuni-forking-spacewalk-with-salt-and-containers/. 2018-08-26. live.
21. Web site: We're back to Earth, and the Earth is flat! Welcome Uyuni!. 2018-08-23. 2018-06-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20180823210642/https://www.suse.com/c/were-back-to-earth-and-the-earth-is-flat-welcome-uyuni/. 2018-08-23. live.
22. Web site: First Public Beta for SUSE Manager 4.0!. 2020-08-20. 2019-03-14. https://web.archive.org/web/20190402103125/https://www.suse.com/c/first-public-beta-for-suse-manager-4-0/. 2019-04-02. live.
23. Web site: Project Spacewalk Announcement. Red Hat. 2008-06-02. 2017-01-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20190721075433/https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-list/2008-June/msg00000.html. 2019-07-21. live.
24. Web site: Red Hat stretches Linux system management tentacle . . 2009-09-02 . 2014-02-05 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140221182540/http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/02/red_hat_satellite_5_3/ . 2014-02-21 . live .
25. Web site: (Spacewalk) Frequently Asked Questions. Red hat. 2015. 2017-02-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20161222204754/http://www.spacewalkproject.org/faq.html. 2016-12-22. live.
26. Web site: Satellite version 6 with Puppet, git, Foreman, Katello, Pulp and Candlepin included - questions on using Puppet. 2014-11-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20141106124038/https://access.redhat.com/discussions/735323. 2014-11-06. live.
27. Web site: Spacewalk: Free & Open Source Linux Systems Management . redhat.com . 2012-10-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20100417084251/http://www.redhat.com/spacewalk/faq.html . 2010-04-17 . live .
28. Web site: Red Hat Satellite 5: Important information and changes. Red Hat. 2020-05-19. 2020-06-28.
29. Web site: Spacewalk 2.10 Release notes. 18 March 2020. Github.
30. Web site: Spacewalk 2.9 Release notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803132732/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes29. 3 August 2019. live.
31. Web site: Spacewalk 2.8 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201901/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes28. 16 September 2019. live.
32. Web site: Spacewalk 2.7 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201832/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes27. 16 September 2019. live.
33. Web site: Spacewalk 2.6 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803131824/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes26. 3 August 2019. live.
34. Web site: Spacewalk 2.5 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803134210/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes25. 3 August 2019. live.
35. Web site: Spacewalk 2.4 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201806/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes24. 16 September 2019. live.
36. Web site: Spacewalk 2.3 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803124401/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes23. 3 August 2019. live.
37. Web site: Spacewalk 2.2 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803124339/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes22. 3 August 2019. live.
38. Web site: Spacewalk 2.1 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803134354/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes21. 3 August 2019. live.
39. Web site: Spacewalk 2.0 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803125850/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes20. 3 August 2019. live.
40. Web site: Spacewalk 1.9 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803133719/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes19. 3 August 2019. live.
41. Web site: Spacewalk 1.8 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201213/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes18. 16 September 2019. live.
42. Web site: Spacewalk 1.7 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201308/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes17. 16 September 2019. live.
43. Web site: Spacewalk 1.6 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190803135850/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes16. 3 August 2019. live.
44. Web site: Spacewalk 1.5 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201328/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes15. 16 September 2019. live.
45. Web site: Spacewalk 1.4 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201343/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes14. 16 September 2019. live.
46. Web site: Spacewalk 1.3 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201411/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes13. 16 September 2019. live.
47. Web site: Spacewalk 1.2 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201438/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes12. 16 September 2019. live.
48. Web site: Spacewalk 1.1 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201455/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes11. 16 September 2019. live.
49. Web site: Spacewalk 1.0 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201513/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes10. 16 September 2019. live.
50. Web site: Spacewalk 0.8 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201637/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes08. 16 September 2019. live.
51. Web site: Spacewalk 0.7 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201659/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes07. 16 September 2019. live.
52. Web site: Spacewalk 0.6 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201719/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes06. 16 September 2019. live.
53. Web site: Spacewalk 0.5 Release Notes. 16 September 2019. Github. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916201739/https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes05. 16 September 2019. live.
54. Web site: Spacewalk-announce-list — Spacewalk 0.4 is here!. www.redhat.com. 2019-09-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20190726091329/https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-announce-list/2009-January/msg00000.html. 2019-07-26. live.
55. Web site: Spacewalk-list — Announcing Spacewalk 0.3. www.redhat.com. 2019-09-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20190721082930/https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-list/2008-November/msg00039.html. 2019-07-21. live.
56. Web site: Spacewalk-list — Spacewalk 0.2 available. www.redhat.com. 2019-09-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20190721080357/https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-list/2008-September/msg00041.html. 2019-07-21. live.
57. Web site: Spacewalk-list — Introducing Project Spacewalk. www.redhat.com. 2017-02-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20190721075433/https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-list/2008-June/msg00000.html. 2019-07-21. live.
58. 4th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security. Linux patch management: With security assessment features. Heraklion, Crete. Soranut. Midtrapanon. Gary. Wills. 2 May 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190917161008/https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/433023/1/Patch_Management.pdf. 17 September 2019. dmy-all. 270–277.
59. Web site: Spacewalk Home. Red Hat. 2017-02-02. 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20161119165751/http://spacewalk.redhat.com/. 2016-11-19. live.
60. Web site: Fedorahosted Sunset. 2016-10-16. 2017-02-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20170203074540/https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/fedorahosted-sunset-2017-02-28/. 2017-02-03. live.
61. Web site: Migration from Fedorahosted Trac. 2016-11-16. 2017-02-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20170202234401/https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/migration-from-trac-fedorahosted/. 2017-02-02. live.
62. Web site: Spacewalk wiki has a new home!. spacewalk-devel. 2017-01-13. 2017-02-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20170202234849/https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-devel/2017-January/msg00000.html. 2017-02-02. live.