Newbie!
I've searched the forum but can't find a useful reply. AFAICT using update2 is free, however when I run the application, I get this error which seems to indicate I need to subscribe (pay money) in order to update> Is this correct? I'm using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (2.4.21-4EL) on a machine which had a subscription but which subscription has now expired.
Surely I should be able to get updates without subscribing?

up2date does require a subscription because RHEL is a commercial distribution. You may not find many updates for RHEL2.1 anyway - it is fairly old. They are up to RHEL5 now.

You CAN add software by downloading the RPMs from other sources. You might be able to configure "yum" to allow for updates but I don't know of any RHEL2.1 yum repositories off the top of my head. Likely things that worked on Fedora Core 2 or CentOS 2 (assuming it was around then) would work on RHEL 2 if you could find a repository for the latter.

If possible you should think about upgrading to a later version. If you can't pay for RHEL you could use Fedora Core or CentOS as they are free distros that are essentially the same as RHEL but don't require use of up2date.

P.S. As of RHEL5 RedHat uses yum instead of up2date.

Thanks very much for your reply, the annoying thing is that I can see all the updates through up2date but I can't collect them! And when I click on the icon I get a page saying 'your system does not seem to registered with the red hat network' and 'the red hat network is a free service for indidividual users...', however registering it doesn't allow me to collect the updates.
Thanks again for your reply.

I was under the impression that RedHat only gave evaluation registrations. If so it may be that it recognizes your system as having previously been registered for evaluation so isn't allowing you to do new downloads past your original evaluation period.

You are talking about commercial versions only? I sometime ago bought Redhat 5, (not a commercial version) (I think they've changed the numbering since then as this came with netscape navigator 4.04!) That came with 'support' of some sort IIRC. But I assume I would have been able to get updates from Redhat even after that support had expired.
Now, with the commercial versions, you seem to have to buy support on a yearly basis, but I thought security updates would still be available free but I must be wrong about this. It seems to vary from 'manufacturer' to 'manufacturer'. Suse for instance seems to be different AFAICT you can go on getting fixes for all versions.
I've 'registered' myself on the redhat network and I'm trying to use that to access the update server.
If there a clear definiton of 'evaluation' and how its different from 'support' for Redhat, I'd be interested to read it.
On the face of it, I would suppose support to be help with installation and running problems and access to non-security updates.

I suppose you must be right, but it certainly isn't clear from the messages I've been getting from the application which are confusing to say the least.

Thanks for your reply.

You said "Enterprise" Linux which is the naming they started using once they went to commercial only after RH 9 (which is why you'll often see it listed as "RHEL" rather than just "RH" in later versions). Many folks still seem to be on RH 9 or (God help them, RH 7.3) but I thought you were saying you were on RHEL 2.1.

After RH 9 RedHat is all commercial. To get the non-commercial distro backed by RedHat you download Fedora Core (or now just Fedora). Essentially it was a branding decision by RH to take the name RH back to commercial only. Fedora is essentially used as the test bed for what ends up in RHEL. Others say CentOS is based on the actual RHEL source code so is a better way of getting what you want. The deal is Fedora comes out faster than RHEL which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your needs.