When we install yum-cron, it configures email notification from cron run-parts to notify us of run-parts for Cron tasks.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several yum queries.

Today, let us see how we can resolve this issue.

Email notification from cron run-parts

Most often, we may receive an email with a similar alert.

We can use the information below to change the email notifications.

Subject: Cron <root@server1> run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
Body:
/etc/cron.hourly/0yum-hourly.cron:

Not using downloaded extras/repomd.xml because it is older than what we have:
Current : Mon Jul 6 18:06:49 2020
Downloaded: Wed May 20 23:19:30 2020
Not using downloaded updates/repomd.xml because it is older than what we have:
Current : Thu Jul 16 17:45:59 2020
Downloaded: Thu Jun 25 22:10:47 2020
"

The cron job relates to an additional package for yum. That is:

yum-cron-3.4.3-167.el7.centos.noarch

And the file that specifically sends the hourly cronjob is:

cat /etc/cron.hourly/yum-hourly.cron
#!/bin/bash

if [[ ! -f /var/lock/subsys/yum-cron ]]; then
exit 0
fi

# Action!

In this case, the command that actually runs is:

exec /usr/sbin/yum-cron /etc/yum/yum-cron-hourly.conf.

And the command it’s getting its configuration is from:

/etc/yum/yum-cron-hourly.conf

A look at this file will show us a few configurations regarding emails inside:

cat /etc/yum/yum-cron-hourly.conf
[email]
# The address to send email messages from.
# NOTE: 'localhost' will be replaced with the value of system_name.
email_from = root

# List of addresses to send messages to.

email_to = root

# Name of the host to connect to send email messages.

email_host = localhost

Moving ahead, our Support Techs recommend these ways to prevent this from coming in:

First, we can try to remove the package entirely since the package runs a simple yum update command every hour.

[commands]
# What kind of update to use:
# default = yum upgrade
# security = yum --security upgrade
# security-severity:Critical = yum --sec-severity=Critical upgrade
# minimal = yum --bugfix update-minimal
# minimal-security = yum --security update-minimal
# minimal-security-severity:Critical = --sec-severity=Critical update-minimal
update_cmd = default

Or, we can stop the service from running by using either of these commands :

/bin/rm -f /var/lock/subsys/yum-cron
systemctl stop yum-cron

Similarly, to keep the service running and the command to issue, we can alternatively comment out the email section from the configuration file:

/etc/yum/yum-cron-hourly.conf

Once we modify the configuration, we restart the service, so the daemon is aware of the changes.

[Couldn’t resolve? We are glad to assist you]

Conclusion

In short, we saw how our Support Techs go about the Email notifications from yum.