Description of problem: The timestamps on the RPMs included in an ISO for a given update are different than the same RPMs downloaded from RHN. This breaks the ability to hardlink common RPMs between the ISOs and updates downloaded straight from RHN. For example, the timestamp of kernel-2.6.9-39.EL.i686.rpm on the RHEL 4 U4 beta ISO is June 1 19:44. The timestamp on the same RPM downloaded from RHN is June 12 09:39. If I extract the U4 beta ISOs to a directory and I also have a synchronization script that downloads all updates from RHN, I cannot hardlink the common updates together because of the timestamp differences. Please consider updating the RHN publish process such that RPM timestamps are maintained as the same timestamp as the ISO.
RHN uses the timestamp internally for ensuring consistency between the content published by Red Hat and the RHN satellite. For this reason, we cannot guarantee that the timestamp in RHN is always the same as the one shipped on the ISO images.