A few ideas.

[Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray]

> yum makecache doesn't do what you want?

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-December/msg01061.html
tells me that,

"you can also run yum makecache to force yum to cache all the xml
files from a repository's metadata and then use yum -C to run queries
or get listing information. Clever people even script yum makecache to
run periodically to keep the local cache synced.

yum -C  removes all network activity and uses only the local cache so
unless you cache the packages locally as well.. you cant easily use
yum -C to do installs or updates.. its very useful for check-update,
list, search, and provides  functionality."

The last paragraph intrigues me. May be that is why we do not have
'yum -C ...' as the default behaviour.

However is it not possible to cache all the metadata, and just
retrieve the packages as needed? This coupled with the 'deltaRPM'
thingie can greatly economise the bandwidth usage.

Happy hacking,
Debarshi
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