Why does the RHN website not agree with up2date or yum on what errata is needed for my system?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
  • Red Hat Network (RHN) or Red Hat Network Satellite

Issue

  • Sometimes it appears that the Red Hat Network (RHN) website lists a different set of available security updates for a given system than you see by running up2date (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and earlier) or yum (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or later). This happens because RHN has an outdated package profile of your system.
  • Why RHN does not show proper list of errata applicable for the system ?
  • Yum update gives "No Packages marked for Update"

  • While running 'yum update' command,  /var/log/up2date logs this error.

    up2date A socket error occurred: timed out
    

Resolution

You can refresh the package profile list by running this command on the system in question:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4:

# up2date -p

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5:

# rhn-profile-sync

Alternatively, you can schedule this from the Red Hat Network (RHN) website by clicking on the system in the System List, choosing the

Packages tab, and then clicking on the "Update Package List" button at the bottom of the page and start rhe 'rhn_check' program.

For RHEL5, you can also clean the yum cache to check if you aren't using an outdated metadata :

# rm -rf /var/cache/yum/*

# yum clean all
# rhn-profile-sync

Root Cause

Diagnostic Steps

If latest version is installed on the system of packages then yum update will give "No Packages marked for Update" .

As yum update is giving "No Packages marked for Update" , need to check if system is updated or not, and is there any other issue.

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