I have just got broadband working somehow(!). I configured it with rp-pppoe eventually because I couldn't get Fedora applet to work.

Now have a problem trying to update through yum or synaptic from any mirror, which didn't occur on dialup. Is it a firewall issue or something. Browser and email client, ftp client work fine. Just nothing to do with updating from a mirror. The updater (yumex) just times out and so does synaptic, but yumex simply freezes.

Does anyone have any ideas? I am retired and have used Fedora for about 18 mnths but I am very much only a user. I can however follow directions if you can help.

I'm retired, too
I don't know, let's try to get a better handle on it. From the command line, as root, do "yum update", and post the output here. That will reveal what repos are set up, and maybe more that we need to know. What happens with the tool "up2date"?

Thank you for your assistance. below is the output from "yum update":

yum update
Setting up Update Process
Setting up repositories
Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: gu-extra
failure: repodata/repomd.xml from gu-extra: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
Error: failure: repodata/repomd.xml from gu-extra: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.

Using Yumex GUI the output was, "Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: base"

The output from up2date log is:

[Mon Nov 21 20:46:44 2005] up2date File "/usr/sbin/up2date", line 1265, in ?
sys.exit(main() or 0)
File "/usr/sbin/up2date", line 328, in main
sources = sourcesConfig.getSources()
File "/usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/sourcesConfig.py", line 263, in getSources
scfg = SourcesConfigFile(filename="/etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources")
File "/usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/sourcesConfig.py", line 42, in __init__
self.load()
File "/usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/sourcesConfig.py", line 85, in load
self.parseRepomd(line)
File "/usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/sourcesConfig.py", line 229, in parseRepomd
repo.baseurlSetup()
File "repos.py", line 544, in baseurlSetup
File "repos.py", line 427, in check

I have not used up2date since installing FC4, so don't know whether thats configured for anything. I have used synaptic with apt configured for the freshmeat repo, but it just freezes too like Yumex, but finally reveals the error:

"E: Method http has died unexpectedly!

W: Release files for some repositories could not be retrieved or authenticated. Such repositories are being ignored."

When I tried apt-get update the result was the CLI seemed to "hang" with the following:
"[root@localhost ~]# apt-get update
0% [Connecting to ayo.freshrpms.net (1.0.0.0)] connection timed out
Get:1 http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/core pkglist [1768kB]
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/core release
Get:2 http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/updates pkglist [1138kB]
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/updates release
Get:3 http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/extras pkglist [1761kB]
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/extras release
Get:4 http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/freshrpms pkglist [69.4kB]
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/freshrpms release
Fetched 4736kB in 1m30s (52.3kB/s)
Failed to fetch http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linu...6/base/release Could not connect to ayo.freshrpms.net:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
W: Release files for some repositories could not be retrieved or authenticated. Such repositories are being ignored.
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

I was amazed when this happened as nothing had worked before! Then tried using synaptic to check packages to update, but when I applied the changes, again long delay and then the information box reported "failed" and specified the repo and rpm name for each failed download (very,very slowly).

I had not used synaptic much since upgrading from fc3, but it did work on dialup as did yumex.

Tried turning off firewall in modem/router. No change

Don't know what else to do.

Hope this info is of some help.

OK, it would seem the issue here is the repo's. Let's look at 1 that works.
Here's what's in MY /etc/yum.repos.d:

dag.repo fedora-extras.repo hide
fedora-devel.repo fedora.repo livna-stable.repo
fedora-extras-devel.repo fedora-updates.repo

Now, do'nt just C&P that. You don't need the "hide" directory, and some of these may not be what you want at all, but it's a start. Here's what's in the dag repo:
#
# Repository : dag
#
[dag]
name=Dag
baseurl=http://dag.freshrpms.net/fedora/4/en/i386/dag/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://dag.wieers.com/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
enabled=1

And here's what's in fedora.repo:

[base]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/
mirrorlist=http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors/fedora-core-$releasever
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

That should give you examplees of how these should look. Much information is available by googling for these repo's.

Hope this helps, and BTW, from whence are you retired, I made my 30 years at GM, and will soon be 70!
Ray

I tried another local repository (Melbourne uni -Australia) using a config file from their website. The result was the same as before. Also, it can't really be the repo's (I think) because they were working fine on a standard dialup connection before I got the broadband. I have changed nothing in those yum config files since. Also I am able to ping the mirror servers OK. I still suspect it has something to do with my network config or (even) my ISP, I just don't know how to troubleshoot further.

I can only hope Ray that when I reach nearly 70 that I too may be able to answer someone's question on LinuxQuestions!

I really appreciate your help.

All of this uses http protocols, I think. Since you are surfing the web ok, I don't know what it could be.
We'll get some more knowledgeable people on this soon, and we'll both learn something.

The final positive outcome for this problem was to firstly get some accurate local mirrors installed in etc/yum repos.d and then to configure the network card in systems-config-network to "automatically obtain IP address settings with dhcp and then to untick automatically obtain dns information from provider (this was the key to the problem) and then to insert the ISP DNS server address in the DNS tab. Close and save. Yum and Yumex worked fine after that.

It was very strange that it all worked on dialup with no changes though. The mysteries of Linux! (for me!)

Thanks to those who assisted me

Now, that IS strange. Not at all understood by me. However, glad it's fixed.