[CentOS] rpm and yum issues

> Greetings.
>
> I am having issues with rpm/yum on a centos 5.2 x86_64.
>
> I am trying to update from 5.2 to 5.4.  During yum update, the
> application became unresponsive during the package search.  It had not
> begun to download any packages.
>
> I tried to do a "yum clean all", but that wouldn't complete either.  I
<snip>
Odd thought: yum -y update yum
?
         mark