Learning Red Hat Linux, Third Edition

Red Hat Network

Red Hat provides a service known as Red Hat Network (http://rhn.redhat.com), designed to help you keep your Red Hat Linux system up-to-date and secure. If you purchased the official boxed-set release of Red Hat Linux, you’re entitled to a 30-day subscription to Red Hat Network for one system. You can purchase additional subscriptions for $60 per year, per system. Any Red Hat Linux user is eligible for a Demo account, which provides complimentary access to software updates and update notifications. Unlike paid accounts, a Demo account does not provide priority access during periods of high load. Moreover, only a single computer can be associated with a Demo account.

The Red Hat Network provides access to security alerts, bug fix alerts, and enhancement alerts published by Red Hat. Updated packages can be downloaded or automatically installed via the Red Hat Update Agent. The Red Hat Network is of significant benefit to administrators of multiple systems, who might otherwise have difficulty applying patches to close security loopholes and fix problems quickly.

Using Red Hat Network

To use Red Hat Network, your computer must be able to access the Internet. To set up your computer, you must perform two steps:

1. Sign up for Red Hat Network.

2. Create a system profile for your computer.

Once your computer is set up to use Red Hat Network, updates can be accomplished automatically based on a schedule or manually, by using the Red Hat Update Agent.

The following sections describe ...