yum and network blues . . . a mighty help anyone ?

[Thiers Botelho]

I'm having some problems with yum on my dual boot desktop behind a 
corporate firewall and proxy.

In order to get proxy auth for yum I unsuccesfully tried each of the 
following (and probably some more combinations):


=============export commands start========================

export proxy_http="http://172.16.16.91:8002/"
        *** with quotes and without proxy login + password ***

export proxy_http=http://thiers:my_password_here@172.16.16.91:8002/
        *** without quotes and with proxy login + password***

export proxy_http="http://thiers:my_password_here@172.16.16.91:8002/"
        *** with quotes and with proxy login + password ***

export proxy_http=http://thiers@fertil:my_password_here@172.16.16.91:8002/
        *** now explicitly appending domain name ***

=============export commands end========================


when doing 'yum check-update' I got always the same:


=============yum output 1 start========================

[root at inf-cpg-c2036-lx root]# yum check-update
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Fedora Core 1 - i386 - Base
retrygrab() failed for:
 
http://www.las.ic.unicamp.br/pub/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/os/headers/header.info
  Executing failover method
retrygrab() failed for:
  http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/1/i386/os/headers/header.info
  Executing failover method
failover: out of servers to try
Error getting file 
http://www.las.ic.unicamp.br/pub/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/os/headers/header.info
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name 
resolution')>
[root at inf-cpg-c2036-lx root]#

=============yum output 1 end========================


At some moment it downed on me that 'failure in name resolution' might be 
due to DNS problems, so I edited yum.conf to repeat all URL entries with 
IP addresses instead of domain names.  Got a nearly identical output, 
except for the final error message:


=============yum output 2 start========================
[snip]

[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (113, 'No route to host')>

[snip]
=============yum output 2 end========================


Then I went to  https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/     and 
browsed for the messages. Not very encouraging: I read about old bugs in 
urllib 
(https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2004-January/003387.html), 
suggestions to download the daily yum build, ASF.


Now I don't suppose I'm the only FC user behind a picky firewall proxy, 
and I'm sure there might be a way around this.

I don't intend to go to the shameful trouble of cooking up a local rpm 
repo behind the firewall/proxy (well, at least not right now . . .)     :(

Any helpful hints ?

BTW, 1 - I can browse normally on Mozilla (after explicit proxy 
authentication request), although It doesn't open https site above 
(probably a certificate issue).

BTW, 2 - here's yum.conf  (AFTER I added some URL entries with IP 
addresses):

=============yum.conf start========================
[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=fedora-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
retries=1

##################
## Basic Fedora ##
##################

# adapted from http://fedora.artoo.net/faq/samples/yum.conf
# www.las.ic.unicamp.br = 143.106.60.117
# mirrors.kernel.org    = 204.152.189.120

[base]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://www.las.ic.unicamp.br/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
  http://143.106.60.117/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
  http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
  http://204.152.189.120/fedora/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
gpgcheck=1
failovermethod=priority

[updates-released]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates
baseurl=http://www.las.ic.unicamp.br/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch
 http://143.106.60.117/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch
  http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch
  http://204.152.189.120/fedora/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch
gpgcheck=1
failovermethod=priority

=============yum.conf end========================

Cheers

Thiers