[CentOS] yum update -> [Errno 4] Socket Error: timed out - More info

Thu Jun 30 15:06:25 UTC 2011
ken <gebser at mousecar.com>

On 06/29/2011 07:58 AM ken wrote:
> Trying to update a second CentOS box, I'm getting this error repeatedly:
> 
> [Errno 4] Socket Error: timed out
> 
> I'm getting this on every mirror and have gone through the list of
> mirrors more than a dozen times.
> 
> Oddly, the RPMs I'm trying to upgrade I upgraded just yesterday without
> a problem on another machine on the same LAN with no problems
> whatsoever.  I can ping mirrors fine.
> 
> There were a spate of these errors back in 2006.  The fix for many was
> to add this line to yum.conf:
> 
> timeout=300
> 
> So I did that on the machine where yum is having the problem, but the
> same errors are returned.
> 
> Anyone else seeing this?  Anyone know what the problem is?

So I tried using wget to download RPMs from a few mirrors.  I was able
to successfully one whose size is about 5.5M, but the others all stop
downloading around 1M.  Then I tried ftp... same deal.  This might be
the reason for the "socket error" in yum.

I don't have quotas set on this machine.  selinux is on, but it's been
on for years... why should it start interfering now?  I'm downloading
into /tmp where security settings are standard (user_u:object_r:tmp_t).

Any ideas?