Besides that it indirectly (rhn_check) spits out bogus error messages (filed as Bug <A HREF="http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17933">17933</A>) it should not run by default since it's by default unconfigured. No need to have a yet useless daemon running (useless because unconfigured). Proposal: make RHN configuration smarter to have it activate the rhnsd daemon after EXPLICIT user confirmation.
we want Red Hat Network to begin working as soon as registration is complete. Because we cannot change the registration program (it is fairly senseless to issue an errata for this program), we will continue to rely on the ability of rhnsd to run even if it is not configured. It consumes only a few kilobytes of memory and is very small and secure. However, per bug 17933, we have made rhnsd smarter, and it checks for /etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid before trying to execute any sub-actions, failing with a syslog message at the DEBUG level if it is not present, which should be suitable.