Not really, given the use case (send mail with output in case of 
errors). Not sure why the cat is necessary, but if it really is, 
something like:

     {
         yum ...
         status=$?
     } 2>&1 | cat ...

should probably do.

On 2013-11-18 17:09, Paul Robert Marino wrote:
> the logger command may be a better choice than a static file.
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Pat Riehecky <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Let me look into it.
>>
>> Pat
>>
>>
>> On 11/15/2013 07:19 PM, William Taylor wrote:
>>>
>>> In /etc/cron.daily/yum-autoupdate if yum exits with an error it will
>>> never be considered an
>>> error because cat will exit with no error. This results with errors not
>>> being processed and
>>> emails not going out. Can this be re-written to not rely on cat so this
>>> won't happen ?
>>>
>>> /usr/bin/yum -c $TEMPCONFIGFILE -e 0 -d 1 -y $SECURITY update 2>&1 | cat
>>>>
>>>> $TEMPFILE
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>    William
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Pat Riehecky
>>
>> Scientific Linux developer
>> http://www.scientificlinux.org/