How to configure Landscape Client
See also: How to install Landscape Client
This guide describes how to configure the Landscape Client Debian package in multiple ways.
If you’re using the snap instead of the Debian package, see how to configure the Landscape Client snap.
If you’re using the charm, you’ll need to configure the client with juju config. For more information, see the Juju documentation and Charmhub’s documentation on the Landscape client charm.
Contents:
- Use
landscape-config - Auto-register new computers
- Enable script execution
- Configuration management tools
Use landscape-config
After you’ve installed landscape-client, you can use landscape-config to configure it on your client machines. Running landscape-config without any arguments starts the configuration, and you’ll be prompted to provide any information needed to run Landscape Client. When the configuration is complete, you’ll receive confirmation that the client was registered successfully or if an error occurred.
Some sample commands with landscape-config are:
sudo landscape-config
sudo landscape-config --silent --account-name="standalone"
To view all possible options for landscape-config, visit the man page with:
man landscape-config
Auto-register new computers
You must have a registration key defined in your Landscape account for this feature to be available. If you don’t have a registration key yet, you can create a new one during this configuration process.
You can automatically register new Landscape Client computers when they’re configured using a registration key. This eliminates the need for manual approval of each computer. This feature is enabled by default.
To use this feature in the Landscape web portal:
-
Navigate to your Account tab
-
If the Registration key field is blank, set a new registration key. You can set the registration key to be whatever you want, but trailing spaces, semi-colon (;) or hash (#) characters are not allowed.
-
Select Auto register new computers if it’s not already selected. Clearing this checkbox will disable the auto-registration feature.
-
Click Save
When this feature is enabled, new computers must be enrolled using the key that’s defined in the Registration key field. You can’t auto-register new computers if there is no registration key provided.
Once you’ve defined a registration key and enabled the auto-registration feature, you can auto-register new computers by passing the --registration-key argument into landscape-config. For example, the following code registers a new Landscape Client computer with a registration key. The {LANDSCAPE_ACCOUNT_NAME}, {COMPUTER_TITLE} and {KEY} placeholders must be changed to the appropriate values for your configuration.
sudo landscape-config --account-name={LANDSCAPE_ACCOUNT_NAME} --computer-title={COMPUTER_TITLE} --registration-key={KEY}
Enable script execution
See also: Landscape’s scripts repository on GitHub
An administrator can remotely execute scripts on any client machine if the appropriate plugin is enabled. This plugin is disabled by default. Any calls to the ExecuteScript API endpoint will result in failed activities if the client has the default configuration. For more information on API endpoints for stored scripts, visit API Methods: Scripts.
To use remote script execution on client machines, you must first enable it with the landscape-config command or by manually editing /etc/landscape/client.conf.
To enable this plugin with landscape-config, run:
sudo landscape-config --include-manager-plugins=ScriptExecution --script-users=root,landscape,nobody
Or, to enable this plugin by manually editing /etc/landscape/client.conf, add the following line to the [client] section of that file:
include_manager_plugins = ScriptExecution
script_users = root,landscape,nobody
After you’ve enabled script execution using one of these options, the system users listed in script_users can run scripts once you restart Landscape Client with:
sudo service landscape-client restart
Setting script_users = ALL (or passing ALL to the --script-users parameter of landscape-config) will allow any system user to run scripts. If script_users is not set, then scripts can only be run by the nobody user.
Landscape clients with configuration management tools
If you want to manage landscape-client through a configuration management tool such as Puppet or Ansible, you can avoid getting duplicate computers by writing the /etc/landscape/client.conf and /etc/default/landscape-client files, and then restarting the landscape-client service.
In /etc/landscape/client.conf:
[client]
log_level = info
url = https://landscape.canonical.com/message-system
ping_url = http://landscape.canonical.com/ping
data_path = /var/lib/landscape/client
registration_key = changeme
computer_title = my_machine
account_name = myaccount
include_manager_plugins = ScriptExecution
script_users = root,landscape,nobody
In /etc/default/landscape-client:
RUN=1
The advantage over calling landscape-config is that this will request a registration only if the client is not already registered against landscape-server. Be aware that some configuration options (namely computer_title, tags, access_group) are only sent to landscape-server on registration.