open source mirror of 163: http://mirrors.163.com/

as a root user

cd /ect/yum.repos.d
wget http://mirrors.163.com/.help/CentOS5-Base-163.repo
yum clean all
yum makecache

But an error occurs:

Timeout on http://mirrors.163.com/centos/6Server/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml
PYCURL ERROR 22- The requested URL returned errer: 404

I can’t find this directory in 163’s webserver (but I do find http://mirrors.163.com/centos/6/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml), so I guess some thing wrong in .repo file.

As for me, I changed all
baseurl=http://mirrors.163.com/centos/$releasever
to
baseurl=http://mirrors.163.com/centos/6

To here, your problem might be solved. For my question about repomd.xml directory is solved, but error of “Timeout on ***” and “cannot retrieve repository metadata” still occur.

I looked up /etc/yum.conf file, and found “proxy” field is available (this may lead me unable to connect 163’s webserver). So I comment them out and yum command works out.