I got a yum.conf from someplace and tried 'yum list available'. ( im using core 2 )
the problem is that i get one huge list of errors which:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Server: Fedora Core 2 - i386 - Base
retrygrab() failed for:
http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/dist...os/headers/hea der.info
Executing failover method
retrygrab() failed for:
http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distr.../i386/os/heade rs/header.info
Executing failover method
retrygrab() failed for:
http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/f...86/os/headers/ header.info
Executing failover method
failover: out of servers to try
Error getting file http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/dist...inux/core/2/i3 86/os/headers/header.info
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
$
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

im connected through a lan to the net, at my college. there is a proxy server and as per the man for yum, i have set http_proxy to what it should be. what must the problem be and what should i do?

First I would check to see if there is indeed a space in the above URL(s) in yum.conf at
'headers/hea der.info'. There should be no spaces in these repository lines.

nz

the url has no spaces of course, but you can see for yourself:

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[base]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/distro/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distr...ra/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/f...at/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
# http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...ra/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/
#gpgcheck=1
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

ive tried getting the conf files from several places for several repositories, with the same result.

Anyway thanks. ill keep trying.

It's probably because you're behind a proxy, so I suppose you must just have configured it (for proxy) incorrectly. Recheck your settings.

Is it only the 'http_proxy' environment variable or anything else also that must be set?

i've set the http proxy in the kde control centre also, and even in mozilla and everything works fine with these. why wouldnt yum work?
anyway ive checked the http_proxy variable and it's right.

( i learnt about setting the proxy using this variable from the yum man page)