RH401: Add base channels from ISO image

1. Download the "base channels content ISOs" from access.redhat.com, from the same location where you downloaded satellite.
This is not the same as the typical dvd install ISOs. For example, for RHEL 6 "x86_64 + EUS + AUS + RHN Proxy/Tools + Supplementary", I downloaded 6 ISOs approximately 22G in total.

2. Best to place these ISOs on an nfs share or a separate partition, so when you need to reinstall satellite you won't have a problem wiping out the disks.
3. prep work

[root@satellite ~]# mkdir -p /var/rhn-sat-import/RHEL6

4. for each of the ISOs:

[root@satellite ~]# mount home:/home/m/software/iso /mnt/nfs
[root@satellite ~]# mount /mnt/nfs/rhn-export-rhel-x86_64-6-20111213.0-01.iso -o loop /mnt/iso/
[root@satellite ~]# cp -ruv /mnt/iso/* /var/rhn-sat-import/RHEL6/

the cp command above is a *very* time consuming process. If there's opportunity to complete other test items without dependency on this step, go for it. 5. import channel

[root@satellite ~]# satellite-sync --list-channels --mount-point /var/rhn-sat-import/RHEL6
[root@satellite ~]# satellite-sync -c rhel-x86_64-server-6 --mount-point /var/rhn-sat-import/RHEL6

the sync command above is also a *very* time consuming process, look to do something else while this is in progress.
update: The sync command above was extremely slow on my virtual machine (11 hours), %iowait was pretty high (around 40-50%) and there was constant paging. This is probably due to my virtual disks on "SCSI" disk bus. I read on some post somewhere that this currently has issues (at the time of this writing) and I'll get much better results with "virtio" driver. I also configured my virtual machine to use 2GB of physical memory instead of the recommended 4GB. I then sync'ed a child channel from ISO, it ran pretty quick, with no iowait or paging. Whether it was due to the disk driver or a child-channel sync having a small subset of things to sync, I'll find out on my next reinstall.