To answer that specific question: no, that's to be expected. certbot-auto will (by default at least) always update itself to the most recent version. The regular command certbot doesn't auto-update.
To answer your thread more generic: having two certbot installations at the same time is probably not what you want. They might interfere with each other. Perhaps you have multiple cronjobs/systemd timers running to?
Looking at the version of certbot and your distribution version, I assume you've installed certbot with snap? I would suggest to continue using the certbot snap and keep it up to date by the regular update methods that are available. The certbot-auto script is being deprecated and I would advice to remove it from your system. The certbot snaps are also updated regulary when a new certbot version is released.
You would probably benefit from installing certbot via snap if you have not already done so. Part of that installation involves removing old certbot versions.
If you have any Certbot packages installed using an OS package manager like apt, dnf, or yum, you should remove them before installing the Certbot snap to ensure that when you run the command certbot the snap is used rather than the installation from your OS package manager. The exact command to do this depends on your OS, but common examples are sudo apt-get remove certbot, sudo dnf remove certbot, or sudo yum remove certbot.
dumb question, but do we even need certbot-auto anymore since it is being deprecated?
is there an equivalent command just by using certbot?
i am thinking just stick with dnf/yum since that rarely (if ever) has any issues, unless using snap (& newer versions) might be beneficial in some way.
EDIT: snap looks pretty straighforward: i figure if its installed with dnf(yum) its perfectly acceptable. using rpm packages in the past has gotten me into trouble.
certbot-auto is just a wrapper script around the Python certbot program. It does have a few script-specific options, but you wouldn't need those options with the regular certbot program anyway. All other command line options for certbot-auto are passed through to the certbot program. So besides that the commands certbot and certbot-auto are equal.
Yes Osiris i completely agree with you. and since the Centos community gave me an alternative install of Certbot to the latest version, that is the way i am going.
Snap looks interesting, although i was reluctant to install something that only maintains one product, especially since that yum/dnf install command worked great.
LetsEncrypt and Centos is certainly very well supported in this forum for sure. even my silly questions have been answered, with much patience & TLC i might add.
somehow we all seemed to miss my favorite time-tested strategy: do nothing and instead go outside and enjoy life. this AM (2020-10-24) i received an auto-email from Virtualmin:
An update to certbot from 1.7.0-1.el7 to 1.9.0-1.el7 is needed.
This update has been successfully installed.
An update to python2-acme from 1.7.0-1.el7 to 1.9.0-1.el7 is needed.
This update has been successfully installed.
An update to python2-certbot-apache from 1.7.0-1.el7 to 1.9.0-1.el7 is needed.
This update has been successfully installed.