Scheduled Diff action on client files do not report the meta data attributes of
a path as a diff.. i.e. if client has a file with filemode = 644 and the channel
configuration file with the same name has a filemode = 755 .. This difference
does not get reported .. This becomes all the more important when diffing
directories....


1) On the command line 
%touch /tmp/foo
%ls -l /tmp/foo
-rw-rw-r--  1 paji paji 0 Nov 10 15:45 /tmp/foo  (s/paji/yourusername)
%chmod 700 /tmp/foo
%ls -l /tmp/foo
-rwx------  1 paji paji 0 Nov 10 15:45 /tmp/foo

2) Go to the SDC Configuration page for that system.. Select Add Files + create
 file.
3) Set the following values
File Type: Text File
Filename/Path: /tmp/foo
File Permissions Mode:644
User or User ID: root
Group or Group ID: root
4) Click on create configuration file
5) Go View/Modify Files + Local Sandbox
6) Select the file you just added and click on "Copy Latest to System Config
Channel"
7) Click on Compare Files
8) Select the file you just copied and click on "Compare Files"
9) Select "Schedule configuration actions as soon as possible." and hit 
Schedule Compare..
10) On the commandline
%sudo /usr/sbin/rhn_check -vv
...............
...............
D: Sending back response (0, 'Files successfully diffed', {'diffs': {'/tmp/foo':
''}})
D: do_call packages.checkNeedUpdate ('rhnsd=1',)
D: local action status:  (0, 'rpm database not modified since last update (or
package list recently updated)', {})


11) Notice - "D: Sending back response (0, 'Files successfully diffed',
{'diffs': {'/tmp/foo': ''}})"

There are no diff's reported... What should have been reported was the fact that
the file mode values, the user id and group id all were different...