Oh this is strange and seems like I found the problem with default yum.

Looking at the redhat docs, yum obtains value of $releasever from the
distroverpkg variable in yum.conf. In case of my BM it is pointing to
centos-release. In case of a working slf6.3 this variable does not exit.

So I commented this line and now everything works. I am guessing yum is
falling back to redhat-release or system-release if this info is not in
yum.conf

Now the question is which package/version fixes this yum.conf?



On Thu, 2013-02-21 at 11:27 -0600, Parag Mhashilkar wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-02-21 at 11:20 -0600, Pat Riehecky wrote:
> > Those look like they should....
> > 
> > What do
> > 
> > rpm -q sl-release
> 
> sl-release-6.3-1.x86_64
> 
> > yum provides redhat-release
> > 
> 
> This command fails with the same PYCURL ERROR 22
> 
> But the file /etc/redhat-release exists and contains
> Scientific Linux release 6.3 (Carbon)
> 
> I suspect most dont see the error since they install many other
> packages, one of which does the required magic. One we are creating is a
> bare min for cloud work.
> 
> > report?
> > 
> > Pat
> > 
> > On 02/21/2013 11:17 AM, Parag Mhashilkar wrote:
> > > Hi Pat,
> > >
> > > Repo files are attached. I did an rpm install of
> > > yum-conf-sl6x-1-2.noarch.rpm separately after the VM creation hoping
> > > that it would fix the problem, but no luck.
> > >
> > > Just a minor correction to my previous email, its not pycurl but yum
> > > that is not able to expand the $releasever
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, 2013-02-21 at 11:08 -0600, Pat Riehecky wrote:
> > >> Can I see your yum repo files (/etc/yum.repos.d/sl*.repo)?
> > >>
> > >> Pat
> > >>
> > >> On 02/21/2013 11:05 AM, Parag Mhashilkar wrote:
> > >>> Hi,
> > >>>
> > >>> I created a minimal SL6 image with yum groups base+core and
> > >>> openssh-server using
> > >>> http://linux1.fnal.gov/linux/scientific/6x/x86_64/os/. Image is created
> > >>> fine but when I boot up and try to run yum update it fails with  errors
> > >>> (see below). I also tried enabling and disabling mirrors doing yum clean
> > >>> all every time before I run the update command.
> > >>>
> > >>> I also noticed there is a /var/cache/yum/x86_64/$releasever dir.
> > >>> Removing this $releasever dir does not help. It is recreated. For a
> > >>> working system $releasever in the yum cache is actually expanded to the
> > >>> respective versions but not in this case.
> > >>>
> > >>> Is there a package pycurl depends on that is not pulled by default
> > >>> making it unable to expand the $releasever correctly?
> > >>>
> > >>> ---------
> > >>> yum clean all ; yum update --skip-broken 1 > yum.out 2>&1
> > >>>
> > >>> Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, security
> > >>> Determining fastest mirrors
> > >>>    * sl: ftp2.scientificlinux.org
> > >>>    * sl-security: ftp2.scientificlinux.org
> > >>>    * sl6x: ftp2.scientificlinux.org
> > >>>    * sl6x-security: ftp2.scientificlinux.org
> > >>> http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/%
> > >>> 24releasever/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 22 -
> > >>> "The requested URL returned error: 404"
> > >>> Trying other mirror.
> > >>> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/%
> > >>> 24releasever/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 22 -
> > >>> "The requested URL returned error: 404"
> > >>> Trying other mirror.
> > >>> http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/%
> > >>> 24releasever/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 22 -
> > >>> "The requested URL returned error: 404"
> > >>> Trying other mirror.
> > >>> ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/%
> > >>> 24releasever/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 9 -
> > >>> "Server denied you to change to the given directory"
> > >>> Trying other mirror.
> > >>> Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository:
> > >>> sl. Please verify its path and try again
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>
> > 
> > 
> 

-- 
Thanks & Regards
+==========================================================
| Parag Mhashilkar
| Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, MS 120
| Wilson & Kirk Road, Batavia, IL - 60510
|----------------------------------------------------------
| Phone: 1 (630) 840-6530 Fax: 1 (630) 840-2783
|----------------------------------------------------------
| Wilson Hall, 867E (Nov 17, 2010 - To date)
| Wilson Hall, 863E (Apr 24, 2007 - Nov 16, 2010)
| Wilson Hall, 856E (Mar 21, 2005 - Apr 23, 2007)
+==========================================================