Troubleshooting System Purpose Mismatches.

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 and later
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Issue

With the introduction of setting system purpose attributes, a new System Purpose Status value is reported by subscription-manager status.

Why Mismatched is reported by the subscription-manager status command?

Resolution

To resolve the status of Mismatched, there are a few paths to take:
1. In the case of not having any subscription attached, attach a subscription that matches the System Purpose attributes that have been configured on the system. Running auto-attach will attempt to resolve this issue on its own.
2. In the case of having subscriptions attached that do not match the System Purpose attributes that have been configured, reconfigure the System Purpose attributes for that system to match the subscription OR change the subscription that is attached to the system.
- *Note**: An example of what this looks like is located within the Root Cause section of this article.

An alternative solution to these is to unset System Purpose attributes from the system. While these attributes are unset on a given system, they cannot be in a Mismatched state. It is the same as saying that you have no preference for the System Purpose or subscription types to attach.

You can use the syspurpose tool from the CLI to manipulate these items after installation:

        [root@rhel8 ~]# syspurpose --help
        usage: syspurpose [-h]

                        {set,unset,add,remove,set-role,unset-role,add-addons,remove-addons,unset-addons,set-sla,unset- 
        sla,set-usage,unset-usage,show}
                        ...

        System Syspurpose Management Tool

        positional arguments:
        {set,unset,add,remove,set-role,unset-role,add-addons,remove-addons,unset-addons,set-sla,unset-sla,set- 
        usage,unset-usage,show}
                              sub-command help
          set                 Sets the value for the given property
          unset               Unsets (clears) the value for the given property
          add                 Adds the value(s) to the given property
          remove              Removes the value(s) from the given property
          set-role            Set the system role to the system syspurpose
          unset-role          Clear set role
          add-addons          Add addons to the system syspurpose
          remove-addons       Remove addons from the system syspurpose
          unset-addons        Clear set addons
          set-sla             Set the system sla
          unset-sla           Clear set sla
          set-usage           Set the system usage
          unset-usage         Clear set usage
          show                Show the current system syspurpose

        optional arguments:
        -h, --help            show this help message and exit

Some subscriptions SKU without the Service Level attributes will not behave as expected. The system purpose attributes are Role, Usage, service_level_agreement, and Add-ons. To see the System Purpose attributes associated with a subscription, check for the Roles, Service Level,Usage, and Add-ons when reviewing subscription information via subscription-manager list –available –all command.

Subscriptions who's service level is other than Premium, Standard or self-support might give issues when assigning system purpose attributes. Some examples are Dev professional, etc because the Service Level for these subscriptions is different.

If you are unable to get into a Matched state, please contact Red Hat Technical Support by opening a case.

Root Cause

When Mismatched is reported by the subscription-manager status command, it means that the user has set a system purpose attribute value that is not currently being satisfied.

There are two scenarios where System Purpose may become 'Mismatched':
1. The system has System Purpose attributes set, but there are no subscriptions attached to meet those requirements.
2. The system has System Purpose attributes set, and has one or more subscriptions with attributes that do not match those requirements.

Looking at the syspurpose output from an example system:

[root@rhel8 ~]# syspurpose show
{
"role": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server",
"service_level_agreement": "Premium",
"usage": "Production"
}

The information from the subscription that corresponds with this is as follows:

[root@rhel8 ~]# subscription-manager list --consumed
Subscription Name:   Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, Premium (Physical or Virtual Nodes)
Provides:            dotNET on RHEL Beta (for RHEL Server)
<SNIP>-----------------
Roles:               Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server      <-- Role (Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server / 
Workstation / Compute Node)
Service Level:       Premium                        <-- SLA / Service Level Agreement (Self-Support, 
Standard, Premium, etc..)
Usage:               Production                  <-- Usage (Disaster Recovery, Development/Test, 
Production)
Add-ons:                                <-- Addons such as High Availability, Extended Update Support 
(Not in use yet)
<SNIP>-----------------
Entitlement Type:    Physical

Diagnostic Steps

To see your current System Purpose configuration from the CLI, run:

    [root@rhel8 ~]# subscription-manager status
    +-------------------------------------------+
       System Status Details
    +-------------------------------------------+
    Overall Status: Current

    System Purpose Status: Mismatched
    - The requested usage preference "Production" is not provided by a currently consumed subscription.
    - The service level preference "Premium" is not provided by a currently consumed subscription.
    - The requested role "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server" is not provided by a currently consumed subscription.

    [root@rhel8 ~]# syspurpose show
    {
      "role": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server",
      "service_level_agreement": "Premium",
      "usage": "Production"
    }
    System purpose successfully sent to subscription management server.

    [root@rhel8 ~]# subscription-manager list --consumed
    +-------------------------------------------+
       Consumed Subscriptions
    +-------------------------------------------+
    Subscription Name:   Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Workstation, Enterprise
    Provides:            Red Hat Container Development Kit
                         MRG Realtime
                         Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder for x86_64
                         Red Hat Developer Tools (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Container Images
                         Red Hat Container Images Beta
                         Red Hat Developer Tools Beta (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Developer Toolset (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Performance Networking (for
                         RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Developer Tools (for RHEL Workstation)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Performance Networking (for
                         RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
                         Red Hat Developer Tools Beta (for RHEL Workstation)
                         Red Hat Developer Toolset (for RHEL Workstation)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Resilient Storage for x86_64
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Resilient Storage (for RHEL
                         Server) - Extended Update Support
                         dotNET on RHEL (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Scalable File System (for RHEL
                         Server)
                         dotNET on RHEL Beta (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Scalable File System (for RHEL
                         Server) - Extended Update Support
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation
                         Red Hat Beta
                         Oracle Java (for RHEL Server)
                         Oracle Java (for RHEL Client)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time
                         dotNET on RHEL (for RHEL Workstation)
                         Oracle Java (for RHEL Workstation)
                         dotNET on RHEL Beta (for RHEL Workstation)
                         Red Hat Software Collections (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Software Collections (for RHEL Client)
                         Oracle Java (for RHEL Server) - Extended Update Support
                         Red Hat Software Collections (for RHEL Workstation)
                         Red Hat Software Collections Beta (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Software Collections Beta (for RHEL Client)
                         Red Hat Software Collections Beta (for RHEL Workstation)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability for x86_64
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability (for RHEL
                         Server) - Extended Update Support
                         Red Hat Ansible Engine
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Load Balancer (for RHEL Server)
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Load Balancer (for RHEL Server) -
                         Extended Update Support
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop
                         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
                         Red Hat Developer Toolset (for RHEL Server EUS)
    SKU:                 RH3413336
    Contract:            11874717
    Account:             6189195
    Serial:              7854492659556168050
    Pool ID:             8a99f9ac6ac68605016ac6a681ed0034
    Provides Management: No
    Active:              True
    Quantity Used:       1
    Roles:               Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation
    Service Level:       Dev-Enterprise
    Service Type:        L1-L3
    Status Details:      Subscription is current
    Subscription Type:   Standard
    Starts:              05/17/2019
    Ends:                05/16/2020
    System Type:         Virtual