If you’re lucky to be working with a recent enough version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) – namely, anything after RHEL 5.7 and RHEL 6.1, then you should know what software subscriptions are and how to list them.

List active subscriptions in Red Hat

subscription-manager is a Linux command in RHEL, you run it with the list option to show what current subscriptions are active for your server.

Here’s how this looks on my recently build RHEL8 beta virtual machine:

[root@rhel8 ~]# subscription-manager list
+-------------------------------------------+
Installed Product Status
+-------------------------------------------+
Product Name: Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 Beta
Product ID: 486
Version: 8.0 Beta
Arch: x86_64
Status: Subscribed
Status Details:
Starts: 23/11/18
Ends: 22/11/19

If you attempt running the same command as a regular user, you’ll probably need to authenticate (tell the root password) first:

[greys@rhel8 ~]$ subscription-manager list
You are attempting to run "subscription-manager" which requires administrative
privileges, but more information is needed in order to do so.
Authenticating as "root"
Password:
...

List all the available subscriptions in Red Hat

It may well be that you have multiple subsriptions available as part of your setup – for instance, you might have additional software installed that is maintained and supported by Red Hat, but uses separate subscription channel instead of being supplied with the default OS one.

You can use the same subscription-manager command to list all the available subscriptions:

[root@rhel8 ~]# subscription-manager list --available
+-------------------------------------------+
Available Subscriptions
+-------------------------------------------+
Subscription Name: Red Hat Developer Subscription
Provides: dotNET on RHEL Beta (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Resilient Storage (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Ansible Engine
RHEL for SAP HANA - Update Services for SAP Solutions
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Scalable File System (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
RHEL for SAP HANA - Extended Update Support
Red Hat Container Images Beta
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host Beta
Red Hat Container Images
Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Load Balancer (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Container Development Kit
Red Hat Beta
Red Hat EUCJP Support (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
RHEL for SAP (for IBM Power LE) - Update Services for SAP Solutions
MRG Realtime
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Load Balancer (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
dotNET on RHEL (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability - Update Services for SAP Solutions
Oracle Java (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Update Services for SAP Solutions
Red Hat Software Collections (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM 64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Performance Networking (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Scalable File System (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time
Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Performance Networking (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
RHEL for SAP - Update Services for SAP Solutions
Oracle Java (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support
Red Hat Developer Tools (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Software Collections Beta (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
Red Hat Developer Tools Beta (for RHEL Server)
RHEL for SAP - Extended Update Support
Red Hat Developer Toolset (for RHEL Server)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Performance Networking (for RHEL Compute Node)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Resilient Storage (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Hana
Red Hat S-JIS Support (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
SKU: RH00798
Contract:
Pool ID: 8a85f99a65c8c8a1016698f9e87423fe
Provides Management: No
Available: 16
Suggested: 1
Service Level: Self-Support
Service Type:
Subscription Type: Standard
Starts: 21/10/18
Ends: 21/10/19
System Type: Physical

Pretty impressive, isn’t it? Can’t wait to try some of these out, Red Hat Developer Tools, Red Hat Container Images and Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability all sound fun!

See Also

• Find Out Red Hat version
• Red Hat Linux
• ScreenFetch in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Look what I have finally installed in one of my VirtualBox 6.0 virtual machines yesterday:

Yes, you guessed it right – the installation steps for screenFetch CentOS work in Red Hat just fine!

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 beta

I’m surprised the screenFetch isn’t reporting release version. Had to use the hostnamectl command to do this:

[greys@rhel8 ~]$ hostnamectl
Static hostname: rhel8
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: 02b5e17ce41846fbaa965ee1c3678162
Boot ID: b36e64b343934359843d2e76db34e8af
Virtualization: oracle
Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta (Ootpa)
CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8.0:beta
Kernel: Linux 4.18.0-32.el8.x86_64
Architecture: x86-64

See Also

• How To: Find RedHat version
• VMware Tools or Open VM tools
• /proc/version

This post talks about VMware Tools and Open VM Tools – packages that help you improve performance and integration of your Unix-like virtual machines in VMware environments.

What are VMware Tools?

VMware Tools are a set of virtual machine enhancements providing tighter integration, smoother operation and much better performance for VMs running in VMware environment. VMware Tools are available for all the platforms supported by VMware, so there’s a separate installer for Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Usually you have to install VMware Tools using virtual CD drive mapped into each virtual machine – you find and run the installer, it installs and configures tools, you reboot and enjoy VMware Tools benefits.

Benefits of Using VMware Tools

• tools are updated in line with vSphere upgrades (so when your virtualization hosts are upgraded, you get fully optimised tools available)
• VMware Tools version is usually the same (if you upgrade in line with vSphere upgradesS)
• VMware Tools version is reported in the vSphere Client and using vSphere CLI

What are Open VM Tools?

Open VM Tools ‘s actually an open-source version of VMware Tools, made specifically for Linux operating systems. As a result, open-vm-tools are bundled with most modern Linux distros or available from the standard repositories.

Open VM Tools are distributed with the following packages:

• open-vm-tools
• open-vm-tools-desktop
• open-vm-tools-devel
• open-vm-tools-debuginfo

Benefits of Using Open VM Tools

• most reliable integrartion with the vendor OS (RedHat, for example)
• no dependencies between vSphere version and Open VM Tools version
• no need to wait for vSphere upgrade to install Open VM Tools updates
• no need to have vSphere access for mounting virtual CD with VMware Tools

VMware Tools or Open VM Tools?

Speaking as a Linux sysadmin and not a vSphere administrator, I would prefer open-vm-tools: installing and troubleshooting them is fully done inside Linux VM, which means you can automate Open VM Tools deployment using native tools.

The same can be done for VMware Tools as well, but would require someone with vSphere access to assist.

See Also

• Hardware Virtualization
• Desktop Virtualization
• VMware Workstation Pro
• VMware Fusion Pro
• Virtual Machine
• Disk Performance in VMware Workstation

I’ve got a few RedHat and CentOS VMs running on internal network of my server, and since updating them quite regularly is a habit I thought this little piece of advice will help all of you who run VMs in a similar scenario.

To make yum command use proxy, your best best is to edit /etc/yum.conf and add your proxy server reference:

proxy=http://192.168.3.1:3128

You don’t have to restart anything but it may be a good idea to do yum clean all and then yum check-update:

[root@testvm1 ~]# yum check-update
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: be.mirror.eurid.eu
* epel: epel.uni-oldenburg.de
* extras: be.mirror.eurid.eu
* updates: centosa5-msync-dvd.centos.org
base                                         | 3.7 kB 00:00
base/primary_db                              | 4.5 MB 00:01
cr                                           | 3.0 kB 00:00
cr/primary_db                                | 1.2 kB 00:00
epel                                         | 3.4 kB 00:00
epel/primary_db                              | 3.7 MB 00:00
extras                                       | 3.5 kB 00:00
extras/primary_db                            | 6.3 kB 00:00
updates                                      | 3.5 kB 00:00
updates/primary_db                           | 1.8 MB 00:01