[Yum] What is "non-caching mode" and how do I get there?

[Joe Cooper]

Hi Seth and all,

I've got a weird bit of behavior (weird to me, anyway, though I'm getting what must look to someone like a sane error message) after an upgrade of an RH9 box to Fedora Core 1 via yum.  I started getting this error from yum:

[root at oppenheimer root]# yum update
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Fedora Core 1 - i386 - Base
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 60, in ?
    yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "yummain.py", line 188, in main
  File "clientStuff.py", line 766, in get_package_info_from_servers
  File "clientStuff.py", line 103, in HeaderInfoNevralLoad
ValueError: unpack list of wrong size

So I decided (brilliantly, if I do say so myself), to delete the /var/cache/yum/* directories.  This has worked in the distant past when yum has had corrupted bits and complained about them, so I figured it would work again.

Alas, it was not to be.  Now I get the following:

[root at oppenheimer yum]# yum clean all
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Fedora Core 1 - i386 - Base
Error - /var/cache/yum/base/header.info cannot be found
Please run yum in non-caching mode to correct this header.

This looks like very sane and sensible advice.  But my yum and yum.conf man pages have nothing about a non-caching mode, and a web search only turns up a snippet of a clientStuff.py patch with nothing about enabling this illusive mode.  The yum --help mentions the -C switch for enabling caching, but that doesn't seem the right solution since yum is telling me to do the opposite.

Anyone have a clue they can lend me?

BTW-The yum is version 2.0.4-2 as it comes from Fedora.

Thanks!
--
Joe Cooper <joe at swelltech.com>
Web caching appliances and support
http://www.swelltech.com