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The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 installation number is a 16-character text string used during the installation process. The installation number enables you to install the full set of supported packages included with your subscription. For a limited set of Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers, the installation number is also used to activate subscriptions for additional Red Hat products and services.
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 installation number allows you to:
The installation number for your Red Enterprise Linux 5 subscription can be found in several places, including:
You will be given an opportunity to provide your installation number during the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 installation process for both attended and unattended (such as Kickstart) installations.
You will also be required to provide your installation number in the Firstboot section of the installation or at the Red Hat "Activate Your Subscription"page: www.redhat.com/activate, if you have purchased subscriptions that were not already activated for you.
Please check the documentation provided with your purchase, such as emails or product documentation, to determine whether the installation number requirement applies to you.
Although not recommended, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 can be installed without using an installation number. However, if you choose not to use an installation number during your installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, your system may include only a subset of the fully supported set of packages associated with your purchase. You may need to manually subscribe your system to the software channels associated with your subscription to install and receive updates for the packages not installed because the installation number was not used.
No. The installation number is required only if you plan to move your active Red Hat Enterprise Linux - versions 2.1, 3, or 4 to version 5. In many cases, you will not need any numbers to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 2.1, 3, or 4. However, in some cases you may need to use a subscription number. In these cases, you may retrieve your subscription number from:
Please refer to Red Hat Subscription Management for installation numbers or contact Red Hat Customer Service.
Yes. If you have subscription numbers from previous purchases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that you have not yet activated, you will first need to activate them, to both activate your subscription and to access your Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 installation number. Activate your subscription(s).
Please refer to Red Hat Subscription Management for installation numbers or contact Red Hat Customer Service.
The existing installation number will be deactivated and a new installation number will be created.
Please refer to Red Hat Subscription Management for installation numbers or contact Red Hat Customer Service.
Installation numbers are only for use with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. They are not used to enable layered applications during the installation process.
To install layered applications that are not bundled with your Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 subscription, follow the same process for previous versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and appropriate child channels (refer to the Red Hat Kbase article #6227).
Depending on the product, the appropriate packages associated with the Red Hat software product will be installed via yum.
If you return a subscription for a Red Hat product that has not yet been activated, Red Hat will disable the installation number, and it will no longer activate subscriptions. If you return a subscription for a product that has been activated, Red Hat will deactivate the subscriptions associated with the product you are returning, and the installation number will no longer be available.
Installation numbers are unique per transaction; not per system. The installation number represents the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription features. It is primarily used to configure the installer. You can install multiple systems that have identical subscription features and SLAs with identical installation numbers.
The installer does not perform any online verification of the installation number. The installation number is used to ensure the correctness of the package set offered for installation. For a small number of customers it can be used to activate a subscription. In this case the number is only used to identify which subscriptions you are entitled to in order to activate the subscriptions in the the account your registering your system(s).
Both the customer and Red Hat Support can use the installation number to verify compliance with a subscription level.
Your subscription is a multi-layered subscription, and you received the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 installation number for the highest level of this subscription. You can find the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop installation numbers that correspond to your subscription below:
It is possible to either specify an Installation Number during Kickstart with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, or to force the installer to skip the Installation Number.
The syntax is as follows in the Kickstart configuration file:
key (installation number)
Or, to skip the Installation Number:
key -skip