Does it make sense to use activation keys if you are only using SUSE Manager for patching? The reason I ask is that if you create a SLES11-SP3 key, “1-SLES11-SP3” and add the child channels “SLES11-SP3-SUSE-Manager-Tools x86_64” and “SLES11-SP3-Updates for x86_64”, and create a SLES11-SP4 key, "
1-SLES11-SP4" and add the child channels “SLES11-SP4-SUSE-Manager-Tools x86_64” and “SLES11-SP4-Updates for x86_64”, what happens when you upgrade a system tied to the 1-SLES11-SP3 key to SLES11-SP4? It will still be tied to the old key.
If you have tens or hundreds of systems, do you then need to edit /etc/salt/minion.d/susemanager.conf on all of the updated systems and modify the activation_key variable for the correct activation key?
The activation key defines channels, group membership, etc. only during the initial registration. It’s a one-time use, not a declarative statement how the client should be configured (use Salt for the latter).
So changes to the client or the activation key after registration don’t influence each other.
[QUOTE=kwk;37409]The activation key defines channels, group membership, etc. only during the initial registration. It’s a one-time use, not a declarative statement how the client should be configured (use Salt for the latter).
So changes to the client or the activation key after registration don’t influence each other.[/QUOTE]
Thank you. It would seem then that if you are only using SM to easily update many servers to the latest SP or latest patch for your given SP, activation keys are irrelevant.