Getting RHEL Evaluation Subscriptions

A free 30-day evaluation subscription is available for any of the RHEL4 products (AS, ES, WS, and Desktop). You can sign up for that evaluation subscription from the Red Hat Web site ( www.redhat.com/rhel/details/eval ).

To get your RHEL evaluation subscription, Red Hat simply asks that you complete a survey (relating to how you use Linux) every two months to maintain your demo account. During the first week of the evaluation subscription, you have round-the-clock access to Red Hat Linux errata and full-bandwidth support for downloading updates.

After you sign up for an evaluation subscription, look for the links that point to the ISO images for the software you want to evaluate (WS, AS, ES, or Desktop). Go ahead and download those ISO images, burn them to CD or DVD (you can use the cdrecord command or k3b GUI tool for burning the ISO), and then install as described in Chapter 2.

Before you can get updates for your demo system, you need to activate the product. Red Hat Network will send you an e-mail, notifying you of where to go to activate a single entitlement that comes with the evaluation subscription. When I did this, I was directed to go to the following site:

• https ://www.redhat.com/now

Sign in with the login and password associated with your evaluation subscription. It may take a few hours before your account is properly activated. Until that time, you will not be able to get automatic updates. To get updates, you can simply double-click on the RHN update icon on the desktop to start the up2date facility or you can run the up2date command directly. Up2date lists all updated software packages that are available, lets you choose which ones (or all) to download, then downloads and installs the new packages.

Note 

It's a good idea to get RHEL updates from the Red Hat Network as soon as you are signed up with a legal evaluation account. For more information on how up2date works, refer to Chapter 5.

If you decide you want to continue using your RHEL system after the demo period, you can purchase a single entitlement for your system. That allows you to continue getting updates and provides access to Red Hat online support features (documentation, errata, and so on).