Problems with yum

I recently upgraded both my laptop and desktop from FC4 to FC5, starting with my laptop as a testbed. All went well with my laptop (well, pretty much anyway) so I decided I was ready to go ahead with the desktop upgrade. First thing after the upgrade of course, I needed to run a 'yum update' to get all the software package updates, particularly the kernel upgrade which would allow the use of nvidia drivers. Imagine my annoyance when I got this from the 'yum update' command:

failure: repodata/repomd.xml from base: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try

I tried all sorts of cures: Re-installing yum, re-installing fedora-release rpm. All failed with the same error. It turns outs that you need to remove a 'nisplus' entry (if you have one) on the hosts line of /etc/nsswitch.conf.

Overall though, I'm very pleased with FC5; it's polished, fast and beginning to show what desktop linux is capable of.