1.3. Terms to Understand

Channel — A channel is a list of software packages. There are two types of channels: base channels and child channels. A base channel consists of a list of packages based on a specific architecture and Red Hat release. A child channel is a channel associated with a base channel that contains extra packages.

Organization Administrator — An Organization Administrator is a user role with the highest level of control over an organization's Red Hat Network account. Members of this role can add other users, systems, and system groups to the organization as well as remove them. A Red Hat Network organization must have at least one Organization Administrator.

Channel Administrator — A Channel Administrator is a user role with full access to channel management capabilities. Users with this role are capable of creating channels, assigning packages to channels, cloning channels, and deleting channels. This role can be assigned by an Organization Administrator through the Users tab of the RHN website.

Certificate Authority — A certificate authority distributes digital signatures to users as part of public key infrastructure for encrypted authentication and communication.

Red Hat Update Agent — The Red Hat Update Agent is the Red Hat Network client application that allows users to retrieve and install new or updated packages for the client system on which the application is run. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 users, use the yum command; for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and lower, use the up2date command.

Traceback — A traceback is a detailed description of "what went wrong" that is useful for troubleshooting the RHN Satellite. Tracebacks are automatically generated when a critical error occurs and are mailed to the individual(s) designated in the RHN Satellite's configuration file.