Hi Alex,
There are changes here that pretty much have to have been done by hand 
or by a script.  Was this done by a kickstart script?  Are you the only 
admin that has root to this box?

So, to turn yum on do
   /sbin/chkconfig --add yum
   /sbin/chkconfig --list yum
and if it doesn't show as 'on' for the various run levels do
   /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 yum on

yum-conf-4x cannot be installed during the install, it has to have been 
installed afterwords ... unless it is done during a kickstart.
I have double checked, and it too has the correct line
    if [ $utime -ge 72000 ]


OK, here is what I think happened, but this all stems from you not being 
the only person who has access to root on your box.

One of the other admin's has a program that they do not want to get 
updated by the nightly updates.  First they put it in the 
yum.cron.excludes list, then they possibly put it in the /etc/yum.cron, 
as excluded.
They were looking at the /etc/cron.daily/yum.cron with an editor and 
accidentally removed a letter.  They might have been in vi and just 
typed 'x' instead of ':x', which would have deleted the $.
They then decided that it would be better if yum just didn't run at all, 
so they did a
   /sbin/chkconfig --del yum
Which would turn off yum.
They then didn't tell you any of this.

Troy

Alex Finch wrote:
> Troy,
> 
>  It seems something went wrong with my installation then. I had problems 
> getting the onboard ethernet
> to be recognised during the installation. Strange if this yum problem 
> was a side effect of that. I haven't noticed
>  anything else not working as expected.
> 
>  When I tried what you suggest I got:
> 
> /sbin/chkconfig --list yum
> service yum supports chkconfig, but is not referenced in any runlevel 
> (run 'chkconfig --add yum')
> 
> 
> rpm -qa | grep yum-conf
> yum-conf-4x-1-5.SL.noarch
> rpm -V yum-conf
> package yum-conf is not installed
> 
> rpm -V yum-conf-4x
> S.5....TC c /etc/cron.daily/yum.cron
> S.5....T. c /etc/yum.conf
> S.5....T. c /etc/yum.d/yum.cron.excludes
> S.5....T. c /etc/yum.repos.d/sl-testing.repo
> 
>        Alex
> 
> Troy Dawson wrote:
>> Alex Finch wrote:
>>> Two small points:
>>>
>>> 1) I noticed that the yum update had not run on a recenly installed 
>>> 4.4 machine. Turned out that /var/lock/subsys/yum
>>> did not exist - don't know why, has anyone else had this experience 
>>> on 4.4?
>>>
>>
>> That happens if you have do a
>>
>> /etc/init.d/yum stop
>>
>> or have done a chkconfig and turned yum off.
>>
>>> 2)  I also spotted a small error in
>>>
>>> /etc/cron.daily/yum.cron
>>>
>>>        if [ utime -ge 72000]
>>>
>>> should be
>>>
>>>     if [ $utime -ge 72000 ]
>>>
>>>
>>>   Alex Finch
>>
>> Nope ... just double checked on a fresh install, it is correct in that 
>> is says
>>
>> if [ $utime -ge 72000 ]
>>
>> I don't know why your's is wrong.  Do a
>>
>>   rpm -qa | grep yum-conf
>>   rpm -V yum-conf
>>     or
>>   rpm -V yum-conf-4x
>>
>>     plus
>>   /sbin/chkconfig --list yum
>>   /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 yum on
>>
>> Troy
>>
> 
> 


-- 
__________________________________________________
Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/CSS  CSI Group
__________________________________________________