Chapter 3. Red Hat Network Daemon

The Red Hat Network Daemon (rhnsd) periodically connects to Red Hat Network to check for updates and notifications. The daemon, which runs in the background, is typically started from the initialization scripts in /etc/init.d/rhnsd or /etc/rc.d/init.d/rhnsd.

	Tip
	Provisioning-entitled systems served by an RHN Satellite Server may have actions immediately initiated or pushed to them. Refer to Section 6.4.2.8.1 System Details ⇒ Details for instructions on enabling this feature.

To check for updates, rhnsd runs an external program called rhn_check located in /usr/sbin/. This is a small application that makes the network connection to RHN. The Red Hat Network Daemon does not listen on any network ports or talk to the network directly. All network activity is done via the rhn_check utility.

3.1. Configuring

The Red Hat Network Daemon can be configured by editing the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/rhnsd configuration file. This is actually the configuration file the rhnsd initialization script uses. The most important setting offered by the daemon is its check-in frequency. The default interval time is four hours (240 minutes). If you modify the configuration file, you must (as root) restart the daemon with the command service rhnsd restart or /etc/rc.d/init.d/rhnsd restart.

	Important
	The minimum time interval allowed is one hour (60 minutes). If you set the interval below one hour, it will default to four hours (240 minutes).