[TriLUG] Where's the RHN System ID Kept?

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Thu, 2003-01-16 at 22:25, Scott Chilcote wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> While experimenting with some different disk partitioning, I wound up 
> installing Redhat 8.0 a few times on the same machine.  Each time I had 
> to go through the registration process for up2date in order to get 
> updates from RHN.
> 
> I couldn't remember exactly what I'd given RHN for my system ID.  I 
> guessed, and got it wrong; "athlonsystem" instead of "athlon system". 
> As a result, RHN said that I didn't have an entitlement, for shame, go 
> away, etc. and up2date refused to run.
> 
> Well, I eventually figured out that I could get on 
> https://rhn.redhat.com and edit my user profile, but what I wanted to do 
> was just fix the name of the RHN System ID on my installation.  I did 
> some recursive string searches and found:
> 
> /etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid:
> <value><string>athlonsystem</string></value>
> 
> So I changed the string there to be
> 
> <value><string>athlon system</string></value>
> 
> And tried running up2date again.  No luck.  It still said my system ID 
> was "athlonsystem" and refused to run.
> 

There's also a "checksum" in that /etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid file. 
It's possible that by changing the system ID text, you invalidated the
checksum and confused the issue.  You should be able to correct the
problem by re-registering under the correct system id.

Also, check your /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date file to be sure that up2date
isn't using a different location for the systemid; it can be overriden
there -- though that's unlikely if you haven't messed with that file
manually.

Another option is to point your up2date at the "current" (up2date
server) installation being run by TriLUG -- see
http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ for the info.  Note that with
RHL 8.0, you'll probably have to run up2date-nox, instead of the
graphical up2date, due to a known bug in the present version of current.
Note that the procedures described in that FAQ have you use a different
systemid file, so the one from RHL can remain intact.  Also note that
current does not keep any registration info at all -- so if you're the
paranoid type that doesn't want Red Hat tracking what packages are
installed, this is an option.

Yet another option for updating your system is apt4rpm, which I
personally prefer.  Apt is much "lighter-weight" than up2date/current,
and requires no registration stuff -- though some think that it doesn't
resolve dependencies that well.

Hope this helps,
Jeremy