I have noticed an item on my computer in the services column ‘rtkit-dae’, what is this? Is it part of the system (Linus Mint 15), or is it a rootkit virus? I am no longer able to update the machine in the normal manner.
It’s the Realtime Policy and Watchdog Daemon … and the name is being cut off (rtkit-daemon)
If you have the rtkit package installed, this SHOULD be running 
It should be being run from /usr/lib/rtkit/rtkit-daemon
you can check this with
ps aux | grep [r]tkit-daemon
(run in a terminal)
It’s NOT a rootkit virus 
See here:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/raring/rtkit
AAnd here’s what the package manager says:-
Realtime Policy and Watchdog DaemonRealtimeKit is a D-Bus system service that changes the scheduling policy of user processes/threads to SCHED_RR (i.e. realtime scheduling mode) on request. It is intended to be used as a secure mechanism to allow real-time scheduling to be used by normal user processes.
–
Hmm… I thought that the whole point of the rootkit is to be invisible to the OS, therefore to the user too
I did wonder why an author would call it rtkit-* … which would be a bot of a give away, but maybe the OP thought the system monitor had appended that when it “discovered” a eootkit.
I have to admit it raised my eyebrow’s the first time I spotted it.
OK I made an A** of myself but better to be sure - thanks for putting me right.
No you didn’t … and you’re right, better safe than sorry.
I had to google it the first time I saw it … to tell the truth, I’d forgot exactly what it was and had to look it up again, I knew it was safe, but couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was :-[