The last check-in date of a RHEL system is not up-to-date on the Red Hat Customer Portal

Environment

• Red Hat Customer Portal
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and later

Issue

• The last check-in date of the system on the Red Hat Customer Portal does not show the latest date.
• Check-in date of a RHEL system points to old date
• The yum command fails to fetch content from the RHEL CDN repositories.

Errors during downloading metadata for repository 'rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms':
  - Status code: 403 for https://cdn.redhat.com/content/dist/rhel8/8/x86_64/appstream/os/repodata/repomd.xml (IP: xx.xxx.xx.xxx)
Error: Failed to download metadata for repo 'rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms': Cannot download repomd.xml: Cannot download repodata/repomd.xml: All mirrors were tried

Resolution

• Verify if the 'rhsmcertd' service is enabled and running.

# systemctl is-enabled rhsmcertd
# systemctl is-active rhsmcertd

• Enable and Start the 'rhsmcertd' service.

# systemctl enable rhsmcertd
# systemctl start rhsmcertd

• Verify the updated check-in date on the Red Hat Customer Portal after 24 hours.

Root Cause

The 'rhsmcertd' service periodically updates subscription-manager data from the RHEL system to Red Hat Customer Portal. If the service is not active, the check-in date is not updated. Therefore, it is necessary to enable this service at boot and keep the service running.

Diagnostic Steps

# systemctl status rhsmcertd.service 
● rhsmcertd.service - Enable periodic update of entitlement certificates.
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rhsmcertd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Wed 2021-05-12 16:21:51 IST; 2s ago
  Process: 1234 ExecStart=/usr/bin/rhsmcertd (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 1245 (code=killed, signal=TERM)

May 12 16:07:45 rhel7 systemd[1]: Starting Enable periodic update of entitl.....
May 12 16:07:45 rhel7 systemd[1]: Started Enable periodic update of entitle.....
May 12 16:21:51 rhel7 systemd[1]: Stopping Enable periodic update of entitl.....
May 12 16:21:51 rhel7 systemd[1]: Stopped Enable periodic update of entitle.....
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.
# 

# systemctl is-enabled rhsmcertd
disabled
# 

This solution is part of Red Hat’s fast-track publication program, providing a huge library of solutions that Red Hat engineers have created while supporting our customers. To give you the knowledge you need the instant it becomes available, these articles may be presented in a raw and unedited form.