The yum-updatesd daemon regularly checks the yum repository and provides notification of updates available for your system. Notifications can be made via syslog, email or dbus, a communication method used between applications. When configured to connect a yum repository, the daemon calls the “yum update” command to update packages on the system. The yum-updatesd service (/etc/init.d/yum-updatesd) is provided by the yum-updatesd package. When started, the service calls /usr/sbin/yum-updatesd, a python script text executable process, i.e.:
# ps -aux|grep yum-updatesd root 4583 2.5 3.9 24076 10484 pts/1 S 04:46 0:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/yum-updatesd
From the yum-updatesd man page:
# man 8 yum-updatesd [...] yum-updatesd provides notification of updates which are available to be applied to your system. This notification can be done either via syslog, email or over dbus. Configuration is done via the yum-updatesd.conf(5) file. [...]
Service Control
Use the chkconfig utility to configure (enable and disable) the yum-updatesd service i.e.:
# chkconfig yum-updatesd on
# chkconfig --list yum-updatesd yum-updatesd 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
Use the service command to manage (stop, start, etc.) the yum-updatesd service interactively ie.:
# service yum-updatesd
Usage: /etc/init.d/yum-updatesd {start|stop|status|restart|reload|force-reload|condrestart}
Configuration
The default yum-updatesd configuration file is /etc/yum/yum-updatesd.conf e.g.:
# cat /etc/yum/yum-updatesd.conf [main] run_interval = 3600 updaterefresh = 600 emit_via = syslog do_update = no do_download = no do_download_deps = no ...
Where:
run_interval: defines how often to check for new updates (in seconds)
updaterefresh: defines how often to allow checking on request (in seconds)
emit_via: defines how to send notifications (valid: dbus, email, syslog)
do_update: defines whether to automatically install updates.
do_download: defines whether to automatically download updates.
do_download_deps: defines whether to automatically download update dependencies.
The service yum-updatesd periodically checks against configured yum repositories to ensure that all system software is up to date, and will alert a user, via the above configuration file, to do so. The checking of the repositories is done via port 80, hence the intermittently open connection. This will not perform an update, but rather is merely informational, telling only the status of updates.