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Foreman (software)
Life cycle systems management software

Foreman, also known as The Foreman, is an open source systems management tool designed for provisioning, configuring, and monitoring physical and virtual servers. It integrates deeply with configuration management software like Ansible, Puppet, Chef, and Salt, enabling automation of tasks and deployment of applications. Foreman supports provisioning on bare-metal using managed DHCP, DNS, TFTP, and PXE-based unattended installations, as well as virtualization and cloud environments. It offers a user-friendly web frontend, a command line interface, and a comprehensive REST API for managing infrastructure efficiently.

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History

Initial development on Foreman started in July 2009 under a different project name. The initial release 0.1 was committed in September 20091 by Ohad Levy.

Availability

Foreman is targeted on Linux operating systems, but users reported successful installations on Microsoft Windows, BSD, and macOS.

The core Foreman team maintains repositories for various Linux distributions: Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and derivatives such as CentOS), Debian, and Ubuntu.

Plugins

Foreman comes with freely available plugins to increase functionality. All plugins are available on GitHub.

Release history

DateVersionChanges and additions
14 October 20131.3.0Improvements were made in the installation process, API, scalability, existing hosts mapping to compute resources, and more. A new official CLI.
30 January 20141.4.0New compute profiles feature, improved plugin registration and web UI extensibility, Kerberos authentication support, and new smart proxy features.
9 May 20141.5.0Config groups feature for Puppet management, integration with FreeIPA, improved authorization system and image provisioning on oVirt, libvirt and VMware ESX.
11 September 20141.6.0Plugin support for Foreman's Smart Proxy, new API version, support for LDAP or Kerberos groups.
2 December 20141.7.0New features for Foreman's smart class matchers supplying data to Puppet, more advanced networking support, and a build health checker.
28 April 20151.8.0Networking user interface and improved provisioning support, new installer features, and performance enhancements.
18 August 20151.9.0User interface enhancements, improved logging, image provisioning, and e-mail notifications.
23 December 20151.10.0Various host management user interface enhancements, DNS plugin support in Foreman's Smart Proxy.
1 April 20161.11.0Parameter management improvements, new Smart Proxy user interfaces, DHCP plugin support in the Smart Proxy.
8 July 20161.12.0Puppet 4 support, New OS support (Ubuntu Xenial, Fedora 24)
5 October 20161.13.0IPv6 addressing and partial orchestration support, Support for different PXE boot loaders for UEFI booting, ISC DHCP performance improvement, Compute resource enhancements, Facter structured facts support
16 January 20171.14.0Automatic IPv6 addressing for hosts in compute resources, support for exporting templates and see help on how to create them, LDAP enhancements to support putting users in organizations/locations
12 May 20171.15.0Default owner for new hosts, notifications drawer, templates and roles locking, import hosts that are in compute resources, SSH keys deployed differently depending on who creates the host. Many VMWare-related fixes, including performance and host editing.
30 November 20171.16.0Netgroup LDAP authentication, Puppet 5 support, VMWare SCSI controllers with per-disk configuration, Plugin Role Locking
17 April 20181.17.0HTTP proxy for outgoing requests, Vertical navigation, Host interfaces auditing, Warning for unsupported PXE loader combinations
19 July 20181.18.0Template importing, RancherOS provisioning support, MTU support for subnets, breadcrumb navigation
31 August 20181.19.0Ubuntu Bionic support, Support for logging to journald or syslog, Full cloud-init support for oVirt
18 November 20181.20.0Report templates, Template rendering engine rewrite, FIPS compliance, UI improvements
1 March 20191.21.0New Diff viewer, Huawei VRP support, Performance, and stabilization
4 June 20191.22.02Array, Boolean, and other types support in Parameters, Compute resource libraries update, Graphql API, Smart Proxy Exposed Capabilities and Settings, Puppet 6 support3
29 August 20191.22.14Maintenance release5
4 November 20201.22.26Maintenance release7
10 September 20191.23.08New Login Page, Foreman Userdata plugin has been merged into Foreman Core, Impersonation capability added, Multiple improvements to GCE compute resource, Javascript stack improvements, Experimental Redis cache support9
4 November 20201.23.110Maintenance release11
12 March 20201.23.212Maintenance release13
9 December 20191.24.014Support for Azure Resource Manager Compute Resource, Single Sign-On (SSO) support using OpenID-Connect, Debian 10 (Buster) support, Dynflow deployment with Sidekiq, Cockpit single sign-on, New status API endpoints15
8 January 20201.24.116Maintenance release17
21 January 20201.24.218Maintenance release19
20 May 20201.24.320Maintenance release21
2 April 20202.0.022New sidekiq-based implementation for Dynflow, Consolidating on PostgreSQL as only supported database, Database migrations and seeding no longer run as part of package installation, Improved UI for managing authentication sources23
9 June 20202.0.124Maintenance release25
19 August 20202.0.226Maintenance release27
1 July 20202.1.028External IPAM, Rails 6 upgrade, Support installation on EL8 distributions, Switch default web server from Passenger to Puma29
3 August 20202.1.130Maintenance release31
20 August 20202.1.232Maintenance release33
28 October 2020342.2.035• Templates DSL documentation • Disabling users • API pagination supports ‘all’ • Experimental host details page
1 December 2020362.3.037• Host registration • Safe mode template preview when safe mode rendering is disabled • Show instance name in top menu
19 March 2021382.4.039• Ansible inventory template • Services only allow TLS 1.2+ connections by default • Managing personal access tokens through the Foreman web UI • Support for Redfish to BMC Smart Proxy
2 June 2021402.5.041• Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal) support • CentOS Stream 8 support • Host registration improvements • Audits performance improvements • Removal of mod_passenger support • New kind of facts in Discovery plugin
7 September 2021423.0.043• Puppet ENC functionality extracted to foreman_puppet plugin • Kerberos authentication using mod_auth_gssapi • Fact parsers are included in core • Deprecated support for running Foreman on Ubuntu 18.04 or EL 7
9 December 2021443.1.045• Improvements and additions to the new Host Details page: Insights tab, Ansible tab, PatternFly 4 Search tab, New Build button and card for BMC Power Management • Descriptions for all of the provisioning templates • New purge:puppet rake task • Cron job to clean old Audits • Provisioning snippets support Puppet 7 • Performance improvements for index pages and Host Config Status • Dropped support for running Foreman on Ubuntu 18.04 • Deprecated the :unattended setting
15 March 2022463.2.047• Debian 11 (Bullseye) support • require_ssl_smart_proxies setting dropped • Deprecated support for running Foreman on EL7 and Debian 10 (Buster)
9 June 2022483.3.049• DSL Autocompletion in templates • EL9 Client repository • Disabling unattended mode dropped • BMC credentials access turned off by default • Updated browser compatibility • Deprecated support for running Foreman on Ruby 2.5
8 September 2022503.4.051
14 December 2022523.5.053• Improved inventory pages • Enabled HTTP/2 on Apache • Use of system crypto policy with Apache on Enterprise Linux 8 • Redis 6 on Enterprise Linux 8 • Allow manual modifications of ansible.cfg
21 March 2023543.6.055• Redis cache can now be managed by the installer • New installations will disable Puppetserver’s telemetry by default • foreman_memcache plugin was removed • Puppet 6 is EOL
20 June 2023563.7.057• Plugin translation infrastructure in frontend • Puma updated to version 6 • Puppet 6 support dropped

See also

  • Free and open-source software portal
  • Computer programming portal

References

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