Before calling this a bug I wondered if yum is expected to handle this style of url. It is the kind one might use to login by ftp to an account requiring a uid and passwd. Should this URL work for a baseurl? ftp://reader:xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/home/reader/no_bak/fedraw (passwd obfuscated for mail) Where that address is the desired repo. It doesn't work with a standard ftp client, but I think yum does'nt rely on that. This particular server is linux running Fedora core 3 test 1 and vsftpd. My tests show these results (failures). Both times its an ftp error so hard to tell how much yum relies on ftp protocol, because the address itself is not a valid ftp URL... I don't think. In this scheme: ftp://reader:xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/home/reader/no_bak/fedraw (password obfuscated for mailing) `fedraw' is actually a symlink to /mnt/pack/fedraw (Which is also chowned reader:reader) But I see from yum output that the address worked or at least the address was seen correctly: yum list updates Yum Version: 2.1.3 COMMAND: yum list updates Installroot: / Reading Local RPMDB Setting up Repo: development Baseurl(s) for repo: ['ftp://reader:xxxxx7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/home/reader/no_bak/fedraw'] repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 4] IOError: [Errno ftp error] 550 Failed to change directory. Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: development [...] So I thought maybe it was because of the symlink But.. This scheme: ftp://reader:xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/mnt/pack/fedraw Gets the same ftp error. yum list updates Yum Version: 2.1.3 COMMAND: yum list updates Installroot: / Reading Local RPMDB Setting up Repo: development Baseurl(s) for repo: ['ftp://reader:xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/mnt/pack/fedraw'] repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 4] IOError: [Errno ftp error] 550 Failed to change directory. Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: development failure: repodata/repomd.xml from development: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to tr I'm a little gun shy about calling this a yum problem. Any one here know if the above schemes should have worked?