[Yum] Header downloads very slow on a Fedora Core 6 machine

[David Timms]

Aad Rijnberg wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am experiencing a strange problem on one of my machines. Once I update this 
> machine, downloading of headers is very slow (sometimes 1 kb per minute) 
> while the rpm's come in at high speed (>1Mb per second). Could there be any 
> explanation for this? (On another machine with FC6 I have no such problems.)
> 
> I already posted this message on the yum-devel mailing list, but Seth Vidal 
> <skvidal at linux.duke.edu> suggested that I ask this question on the yum 
> mailing list. He did mention that it was probably due to an involved firewall 
> ("it (the firewall) is giving you fits about the byte-range requests.").
> 
> Has anybody experienced similar problems? If yes, how can it be solved?
I experienced the similar today on an i386 vmware guest, that is on 
kernel-2-6-18.. from mid december. Doing just update kernel, the 
repodata and header download took ages, while the 15MB kernel took only 
1.5 mins.

Maybe it is a web proxy is causing problems. The ISP may have added one, 
that operates transparently {almost}. Perhaps a yum -d 15 will provide 
sufficient information to analyze further.

DaveT.