[CentOS] Bug in yum Logwatch reporting

Fri Apr 3 16:44:42 UTC 2009
Mike A. Harris <mharris at mharris.ca>

Brett Serkez wrote:
> I've been noticing yum updates on several servers I manage over the
> last few weeks, which I know I didn't perform and could not explain
> until this morning.  At first I suspect a break-in, but found no other
> evidence or reason an intruder would run the yum updates I was
> viewing.
> 
> Yum updates are logged in /var/log/yum.log, which is what Logwatch
> scans.  Seems that the format of the log entries is: "MMM DD", the
> year is missing!   This morning looking at this log sequentially I
> noticed I did do yum updates on Apr 02 and Apr 03 as reported in last
> night's logwatch, but not April of 2009, but rather April of 2008!
> 
> Has anyone else noticed this behavior and/or know if there is a fix in
> progress for it?

I've noticed the same problem occurs at least as far back as
Fedora Core 1 and it has startled me as well.  I like to keep my log 
files around for a lot longer than the system defaults.  I guess people 
running the stock logrotate configuration and never changing it would be 
much less likely to ever notice this problem.