Install Linux Commserve server offline or without a RHEL subscription

Starting with Commvault Platform Release 2023 (11.30), during installation, cvpkgadd uses yum to install third-party packages that the Commvault software requires. If the CommServe server is in a dark site, can't reach the Red Hat repos, or simply doesn't have an active Red Hat subscription, the installation of the packages fails and, thus, the installation of the Commvault software also fails.

Symptoms

During the Installing third-party RPMs step, cvpkgadd will report a failure. If the server can't connect to the RPM Repositories, timeouts such as the following appear in /var/log/dnf.log:

2024-08-01T21:54:06+0000 DDEBUG Command: yum install -y mssql-server-15.0.4335.1-6.x86_64.rpm unixODBC-*.rpm net-tools*.rpm --nogpgcheck --skip-broken
...
2024-08-01T21:56:06+0000 DEBUG error: Curl error (28): Timeout was reached for https://packages.microsoft.com/rhel/8/prod/repodata/repomd.xml [Connection timed out after 120000 milliseconds] (https://packages.microsoft.com/rhel/8/prod/repodata/repomd.xml).

If the server is running RHEL and is not registered with an entitlement server, that problem is reported instead.

Causes

The Commvault installation media bundles the required RPM files, but the system still needs to connect to the yum/dnf repository to check dependencies.

Resolution

RHEL ISOs come in 2 flavors: DVD and Boot. You need a copy of the DVD ISO, and you need to mount the DVD ISO on the server.

In the following example, the DVD ISO is mounted at /mnt/rheliso. If your DVD ISO is mounted in a different location, use that path in the file below.

Create /etc/yum.repos.d/rheliso.repo with the following content:

[InstallMedia-BaseOS]
name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 - BaseOS
metadata_expire=-1
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
baseurl=file:///mnt/rheliso/BaseOS/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release

[InstallMedia-AppStream]
name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 - AppStream
metadata_expire=-1
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
baseurl=file:///mnt/rheliso/AppStream/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release

You should now see these repos available:

# dnf repolist
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Unable to read consumer identity

This system is not registered with an entitlement server. You can use subscription-manager to register.

repo id                                             repo name
InstallMedia-AppStream                              Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 - AppStream
InstallMedia-BaseOS                                 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 - BaseOS

You can now run cvpkgadd to perform the installation. Dependencies will be installed from the mounted ISO.

When done, unless you intend to leave the ISO mounted permanently, you can edit /etc/yum.repos.d/rheliso.repo and change both "enabled=1" lines to "enabled=0", or even delete the file outright.