[CentOS] Network guru please help: baffled by missing file

Fri Jul 17 12:14:26 UTC 2009
Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net>

The mirrorlist entry in my Fedora-11 /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-update.repo
reads:
mirrorlist=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=updates-released-
f$releasever&arch=$basearch

As far as I can see, this means that yum is looking for
the file metalink at mirrors.fedoraproject.org ?

If I try "sudo yum update" I get:
-----------------------------------
[tim at elizabeth ~]$ sudo yum update
Loaded plugins: aliases, allowdowngrade, auto-update-debuginfo, 
basearchonly, changelog, downloadonly, fastestmirror, filter-
              : data, keys, list-data, merge-conf, post-transaction-actions, 
presto, priorities, protect-packages,
              : protectbase, refresh-packagekit, refresh-updatesd, remove-
with-leaves, rpm-warm-cache, security, show-leaves,
              : tsflags, upgrade-helper, verify, versionlock
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Error: Cannot retrieve metalink for repository: updates. Please verify its 
path and try again
-----------------------------------
Adding --noplugins does not help:
-----------------------------------
[tim at elizabeth ~]$ sudo yum --noplugins update
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
updates. Please verify its path and try again
-----------------------------------

Trying to get the file with wget:
-----------------------------------
[tim at elizabeth ~]$ wget https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink
--2009-07-17 13:04:41--  https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink
Resolving mirrors.fedoraproject.org... 209.132.176.122
Connecting to mirrors.fedoraproject.org|209.132.176.122|:443... connected.
ERROR: certificate common name `fedoraproject.org' doesn't match requested 
host name `mirrors.fedoraproject.org'.
To connect to mirrors.fedoraproject.org insecurely, use `--no-check-
certificate'.
Unable to establish SSL connection.
-----------------------------------
Adding --no-check-certificate does not seem to help:
-----------------------------------
[tim at elizabeth ~]$ wget --no-check-certificate 
https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink
--2009-07-17 13:06:22--  https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink
Resolving mirrors.fedoraproject.org... 209.132.176.122
Connecting to mirrors.fedoraproject.org|209.132.176.122|:443... connected.
WARNING: certificate common name `fedoraproject.org' doesn't match requested 
host name `mirrors.fedoraproject.org'.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2009-07-17 13:06:23 ERROR 404: Not Found.
-----------------------------------

When I look at the http traffic on my server with wireshark
the file-request seems to be properly sent,
but the file is not found.

The symptoms seem to me (no http expert) to suggest
that there is some condition for seeing this file
that my system is not fulfilling.

Any and all suggestions gratefully received.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin