[rhn-users] rhnsd daemon update

[Jesse Becker]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 09:50:45PM +0800, Tsai Li Ming wrote:
> From the rhn website, "The Red Hat Network Daemon (rhnsd) periodically 
> connects to Red Hat Network to check for updates and notifications."
> 
> Does the rhnsd daemon perform system updates using up2date 
> automatically, similar to yumd? If not, can up2date be configured to 

The rhnsd program will check for updates approximately once every two
hours.  However, I have heard reports, and directly seen, that rhnsd
will occasionally get stuck, and do nothing at all until it is restarted.  

> update the system automatically without having to use a cron job?

This is the purpose of rhnsd.  However, I have found it more reliable to
simply run /usr/sbin/rhn_check from cron. 

Digging through the rhnsd source code, it appears to do three things:  
	1) Call rhn_check every 120 minutes.
	2) Jitter the 120 min delay time slightly so not all hosts slam
	   the RHN servers all at once.
	3) provide some very limited logging.

I've had the rhnsd program freeze on me enough times that I no longer use it.
Instead, I have the following in cron, and it seems to work well:
	
	0 */2 * * * perl -e 'sleep rand(3600)'; /usr/sbin/rhn_check	


-- 
Jesse Becker
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