/etc/cron.daily/makewhatis.cron: Cron error each day

[jsmith19810808]

I keep continually getting this error message in my inbox for Centos 5.7 (it's exactly the same as any of the other RHEL, infact it's closer to RHEL than Fedora is even).

But it's suddenly started appearing since last weekend I think.

Subject: Cron <root(at)mynode> run-parts /etc/cron.daily

Message content:
/etc/cron.daily/makewhatis.cron:

/usr/sbin/makewhatis: line 39: mktemp: command not found
/etc/cron.daily/rpm:

/etc/cron.daily/rpm: line 3: /bin/mktemp: No such file or directory

Does anyone have an idea how to fix this, I really don't understand what it actually does, can someone help it is just to clean up so the error doesn't appear but is it anything critial at all?

Any help is much appreciated and I look forward to any replies,
Jeremy.

[Roxoff]

What happens when you do 'which mktemp'? Does the it match the place where the script is looking for it, /bin/mktemp? If it's /usr/local/mktemp or /usr/bin/mktemp, then it'd explain the error.

Is the mktemp package installed (try 'rpm -q mktemp' or 'rpm -qa|grep mktemp' or 'yum list installed|grep mktemp')?

Have you upgraded something recently from a non-standard repository that's removed it, or replaced the makewhatis.cron script?

[jsmith19810808]

I am not actioning this it's an automated process the crontab is obviously doing this.

But i really have not got a clue what they are, that's what I was asking does anyone know what any of these actually do?

I will google this again sorry on another term see if that comes up with anything, thanks

[Roxoff]

Cron runs tasks on a scheduled basis - in this case a small script that builds a database about installed packages.

The script uses temporary storage (probably in the /var/temp directory) and for this it uses the tool mktemp. The script is complaining that the mktemp tool cannot be found using the path it's trying.

But it was working before, so either something has changed the script or something has moved or removed the tool.

[jsmith19810808]

That makes perfect sense yes of course!

What I have done though is gone yum search found the package 'mktemp'

The used the command:

yum reinstall mktemp

It should not appear again I hope lol.

Thanks though very much appreciated!
Jeremy