yum-updates versus rhnsd

[Rick Stevens]

Ronald McCarty wrote:
> Could anyone point me to a good resource on the differences / uses of 
> yum-updates vs. rhnsd when running Red Hat Enterprise 5?
> 
> It appears to be quite a bit of overlap; however, I assume there may be 
> reasons they both run by default...

Not sure.  rhnsd (a.k.a up2date) requires an "entitlement" (or
subscription) to access the repository for its content.  yum (and its
various permutations) simply requires the URL to a repository (typically
a public repo) and doesn't require an entitlement.

Why do both run?  My guess is that rhnsd is the primary beast and picks
up Red Hat-specific things (kernels, Cluster Suite stuff, etc.), but
some of the other utilities that're installed as part of RHEL may use
public yum repositories.  This is just my educated guess.  I haven't run
RHEL for quite a while.  We use CentOS or Fedora here.
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