Although this is not exactly what you are asking for, starting with subscription-manager-1.14, the subscribe module has been updated to default to --auto attach subscriptions...

[root@qe-blade-13 ~]# subscription-manager subscribe --help | grep -A1 -- --auto
  --auto                Automatically attach compatible subscriptions to this
                        system. This is the default action.

If this RFE is accepted and the --auto-attach/--autosubscribe options are set as default options on the register module, then I'd suggest that a new --no-auto option also be added to the register module.

I would be in favor of making 'register --auto-attach' the default behaviour or register.

However, that changes the default behaviour to be 'opt-out' on consuming a subscription, which is probably not acceptable.

(In reply to Adrian Likins from comment #5)
> However, that changes the default behaviour to be 'opt-out' on consuming a
> subscription, which is probably not acceptable.

Hi Adrian, could you clarify?   thanks,

cloned for RHEL 6:
Bug 1218438 - [RFE] RHEL 6: make --auto-attach the default behavior for subscription-manager, and register without attaching if no matching subs found

Re-opening.  This bug and the clone are part of a CEE initiative.  I did not see clarification/explanation based on comment 6.  Thanks.

(In reply to Brian Hamrick from comment #8)
> Re-opening.  This bug and the clone are part of a CEE initiative.  I did not
> see clarification/explanation based on comment 6.  Thanks.

Registering a system is basically 0 costs, and doesn't really change the way any subscriptions are allocated. But then attaching a subscription potentially changes that, in ways that can be hard to predict (a new registered machine could exhaust a pool that could cause a prod machine to fail to heal, etc).

If register and attach needs to happen in one command with no args, I'd prefer to just add a new subcommand rather than change the default behaviour of register.

It wouldn't need to do much aside from 'register [register options] --auto-attach'

How does CEE describe to customers 'register and auto attach'?

(name brainstorming follows...)
subscription-manager attach_system
subscription-manager register_attach
subscription-manager join
subscription-manager consume
subscription-manager auto
subscription-manager use_defaults
subscription-manager defaults
subscription-manager authorize
subsrciption-manager subscribe  (though that's already used...)
subscription-manager enroll

I am not in favor of adding another subcommand as suggested in comment 11.  This would just require more documentation and confusion trying to determine which command to run.


Do we already understand that...  "subscription-manager register --auto-attach" is already a one liner that will register and attach available subscriptions that provide for the installed products.  I personally don't think this is too much for a command liner administrator to run.  As a root administrator, I generally prefer atomic operations.  For example, I'd prefer to register the machine in step one, and then explicitly review the available subscriptions/contracts in step two and manually decide which subscriptions to attach in step three.  I therefore vote to keep the current behavior.  If I really want the behavior described in comment 0, I will run "subscription-manager register --auto-attach".

I am NACKing this for 7.3. Auto attach can be enabled today using the --auto-attach command line. This would be too big a change in behavior for customers that are fully accustomed to the 6.x & 7.x behavior of not auto attaching by default.