I found my problem.. heh.
The Centos-3.5 directories aren't set up to use the latest Yum; they don't have repomd.xml files.
The secret is to use rpm -Uvh http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/download/2.0/yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm and an /etc/yum.conf like this: ====8<-----cut-here------------ [main] exclude=mod_ssl* httpd* perl mysql* php* #add this line for cpanel servers cachedir=/var/cache/yum debuglevel=2 logfile=/var/log/yum.log pkgpolicy=newest distroverpkg=redhat-release tolerant=1 exactarch=1
[base] name=CentOS-$releasever - Base baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos-3/3.5/os/$basearch/ gpgcheck=1
#released updates [update] name=CentOS-$releasever - Updates baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos-3/3.5/updates/$basearch/ gpgcheck=1
#packages used/produced in the build but not released [addons] name=CentOS-$releasever - Addons baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos-3/3.5/addons/$basearch/ gpgcheck=1
#additional packages that may be useful [extras] name=CentOS-$releasever - Extras baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos-3/3.5/extras/$basearch/ gpgcheck=1