Frequent email notification from cron run-parts

Symptoms

When yum-cron is installed, this is configured by default to notify you of run-parts for Cron tasks. When this completes, it alerts you via email.

Description

You may receive an email with a similar alert, notifying you run-parts has run. You 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 
"

Workaround

This comes from an additional package for yum. The cron job is related to this package:

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

And the file in question that specifically sends the hourly cronjob is this:

cat /etc/cron.hourly/yum-hourly.cron

#!/bin/bash

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

# Action!

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 from this file: 

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

If we take a look at that file we also find some configuration 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 to send email messages.

email_host = localhost

There are a few ways that you can stop the emails from coming in: 

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

You can stop the service from running by using one of these commands : 

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

Or, If you want the service to keep running and the command to be issued, you can alternatively comment out the email section from the configuration file mentioned above :

/etc/yum/yum-cron-hourly.conf 

Once the configuration has been modified, please restart the service, so the daemon is aware of the changes.