Very weird...
Could Cron be using too low a priority for zypper to retrieve the data?
along similar lines.. are the interactive and the non interactive going at very similar times? can you move cron to kick zypper off at.. say every hour 10 after and look for different results? or to really really make sure the environments are the same, could you do (both as your id and within the cron) su - root -c "zypper command and flags"? I'm totally grasping at straws and I'm starting to suspect crazy, paranoid things.. like perhaps the network has something similar to the things I've seen in my linksys router where it can turn off all or certain types of traffic between certain hours -- Even the Magic 8 ball has an opinion on email clients: Outlook not so good. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org