[Yum] Yum service hangs

[ugob at camo-route.com (Ugo Bellavance)]

Hi,

	I use the yum service on Tao Linux (RHEL 3.0 clone) and it tends to 
hang sometimes.  This means that I can't run yum manually and the 
updates aren't done.  When I try to run it manually I get this error:

[root@server divers]# yum update

Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running. Aborting.


	This is the ps -aux | grep yum output:

[root@server divers]# ps -aux | grep yum
root      9794  0.0  0.0  2136  476 ?        S    Aug31   0:00 /bin/sh 
/etc/cron.daily/yum.cron
root      9795  0.0  0.0  1960  380 ?        S    Aug31   0:00 awk -v 
progname=/etc/cron.daily/yum.cron progname {?????   print progname 
":\n"?????   progname="";????       }????       { print; }
root      9796  0.0  0.5 15104 5808 ?        S    Aug31   0:00 
/usr/bin/python /usr/bin/yum -R 10 -e 0 -d 0 -y update yum

	Another consequence is that my daily cronjobs don't end untill I kill 
the processes.

This is the message I get from cron's e-mail once I do.

/usr/bin/run-parts: line 36:  9794 Terminated              $i 2>&1
       9795                       | awk -v "progname=$i" 'progname {
				   print progname ":\n"
				   progname="";
			       }
			       { print; }'

Then, I delete /var/run/yum.pid and I can run yum manually.

Someone on another list said that it looks like it hangs while trying to 
read from the mirror.  Is it possible for a repo to hang a client by not 
replying?

Thanks,

Ugo