Red Hat Knowledgebase

This error occurs when the system ID and the server ID mis-matches. In this case, a system will not receive any updates as Red Hat Network (RHN) is unaware of the system. RHN maintains profiles for the systems that are registered to it. Every system is identified based on the server ID on RHN. This server ID on RHN should match your system ID listed in the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid file, where all the system information related to RHN is stored. So if the system ID and the server ID mis-matches, then the system will not receive updates from RHN.

You may get an error message similar to the following:

Error Message:

Please run rhn_register (or up2date --register on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 or later) 
as root on this client

Error Class Code: 9
Error Class Info: Invalid System Credentials.

Explanation:
An error has occurred while processing your request. If this problem
persists please enter a bug report at bugzilla.redhat.com.
If you choose to submit the bug report, please be sure to include
details of what you were trying to do when this error occurred and
details on how to reproduce this problem.

However, after a system is reinstalled the system ID will differ from the saved server ID on RHN. In this case, newly installed systems will not match with the credentials that are on RHN, as RHN will still have the profile for the old system. Users can check a system ID with the following command:

# grep ID /etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid

You can now compare it with the server ID of the system registered on your RHN account. The output of the above command would be similar to the following:

# grep ID /etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid
<value><string>ID-100100000</string></value>

To resolve this error, delete the current system profile on RHN and re-register the system so that it will update the new system profile as well as the new system ID. For step by step information regarding re-registration process, see the following Red Hat Network FAQ: https://rhn.redhat.com/help/faq/#26 or additional entries in the Knowledgebase on how to re-register a system to RHN.