Troubleshooting cPanel update failure with Yum error

When trying to update cpanel, you may see the following error:

[2016-04-07 17:26:02 +0000]      [20439] checkyum version 22.3
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439] Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439] The system failed to execute yum with the arguments “-y -c /etc/yum.conf update” because of an error: The subprocess “/usr/bin/yum” reported the “EPERM” (1) error when it ended. :
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]  One of the configured repositories failed (Unknown),
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]  and yum doesn't have enough cached data to continue. At this point the only
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]  safe thing yum can do is fail. There are a few ways to work "fix" this:
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]      1. Contact the upstream for the repository and get them to fix the problem.
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]      2. Reconfigure the baseurl/etc. for the repository, to point to a working
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         upstream. This is most often useful if you are using a newer
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         distribution release than is supported by the repository (and the
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         packages for the previous distribution release still work).
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]      3. Disable the repository, so yum won't use it by default. Yum will then
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         just ignore the repository until you permanently enable it again or use
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         --enablerepo for temporary usage:
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]             yum-config-manager --disable <repoid>
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]      4. Configure the failing repository to be skipped, if it is unavailable.
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         Note that yum will try to contact the repo. when it runs most commands,
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         so will have to try and fail each time (and thus. yum will be be much
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         slower). If it is a very temporary problem though, this is often a nice
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]         compromise:
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]             yum-config-manager --save --setopt=<repoid>.skip_if_unavailable=true
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439]
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439] Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: base/$releasever/x86_64
[2016-04-07 17:26:07 +0000]      [20439] checkyum version 22.3

This error occurs when yum is unable to find the release version of CentOS.

You can resolve this issue by running the following:

Make sure to specify your version of CentOS that you are running

yum --releasever 7 update