Setting up a Spacewalk Server on VMWare

Prerequisites

Install the Oracle DB server as per spacewalk instructions: https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/OracleXeSetup. Only bother with the server setup. It will be a bit tricky but unfortunately I cannot share my experiences as I am usin an existing Oracle Database server.
My Setup is as follows:
- DB Server 192.168.0.2
- DNS Server 192.168.0.1
- Gateway 192.168.0.1
- Spacewalk Server 192.168.0.3
- Subnet 255.255.255.0

PLEASE READ

THERE IS A BUG IN SPACEWALK 0.7 and 0.8. SPACEWALK WILL NOT WORK IF THE ORACLE DB SERVER IS ON A DIFFERENT MACHINE. IT MUST BE INSTALLED LOCALLY!
(PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU DID MANAGE..)

Setup

These are the steps I took to install the latest Spacewalk built on a Fedora 12 system on a VMWare ESX3i Server
#Configure the VMWare to have 256MB memory, 1 HDD 70GB
#Install Fedora 12 from the DVD (as there is only 256MB memory, a text based installer will install 199 packages)
system-config-network #to set up your networking
vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 #edit some of the boot parameters
# change onboot and usercontrol to ON
/sbin/chkconfig --level 35 network on #bring up the network on each start
#Follow the instructions here to install VMWare tools
vi /etc/hosts
 

  1. add your FQDN and IP to this file
     

init 0
#Change the memory of the server to 4GB via te VMWare console.
#log into the spacewalk server via ssh/putty to easily use copy and paste from now on.(if you did not restart your computer since the setting up of networking, do it now
hostname #here you should now see the fully qualified domain name
#enter this command to install the required official repository:
rpm -Uvh http://spacewalk.redhat.com/yum/0.8/Fedora/12/i386/spacewalk-repo-0.8-1.fc12.noarch.rpm
cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/jpackage.repo << EOF
[jpackage]
name=jpackage-f10
baseurl=http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/jpackage/6.0/fedora-10/free/
gpgkey=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage.asc
gpgcheck=1
EOF
yum -y update #to update the Fedora 12 installation
yum -y install wget #install wget to download files
cd /tmp #to change to the download folder
#download the oracle database clients from oracle.com (don't deviate from he versions) to /tmp:
#Instant Client Package - Basic: oracle-instantclient-basic-10.2.0.4-1.i386.rpm
wget http://www.bluhm-de.com/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=11141\&folderId=11130\&name=DLFE-202.rpm #but please use the official oracle site (UPDATE: NOT WORKING ANYMORE)
#Instant Client Package - SQL*Plus: oracle-instantclient-sqlplus-10.2.0.4-1.i386.rpm
wget http://www.bluhm-de.com/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=11141\&folderId=11130\&name=DLFE-201.rpm #but please use the official oracle site (UPDATE: NOT WORKING ANYMORE)
rpm -ivh *.rpm #to install the Oracle DB clients
yum -y install spacewalk-oracle setuptool #to install the spacewalk system plus dependencies (I got 464 packages to download and install).
spacewalk-setup --disconnected # follow the instructions on https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/HowToInstall#ConfiguringSpacewalk
 

12. /usr/sbin/rhn-satellite restart # to start spacewalk
13. setup # I have used setup to disable the firewall. Maybe you just want to open the relevant ports...