A few ideas.

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 3/7/07, Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray <debarshi.ray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 3. A "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" combination for YUM and a
> 'refresh package information' for Pirut, so that the package
> information is updated only when explicitly stated by the user.
> However I do not know whether this is already available in YUM (and
> Pirut) or not.

yum makecache doesn't do what you want?

-jef