Bug 186041

In your /etc/yum.conf set:
keepcache=1

The man page for yum says that keepcache needs to be set to 1 if you want to
keep packages after a succesful installation. In this case installation is
unsuccesful but it still removes the packages.

NOTE: Yum wipes out cache downloaded files after a crash.

Following is crash data.  Note that somehow, yum was not
able to locate the file so it crashes.  Since yum is
transactional, all cache data is blown away as you cannot
necessairly see that in the crash dump - but I have verified
that my /var/cache/yum/*/packages are wiped clean after the
crash

downloading Packages:
(1/43): snort-2.4.4-3.fc5 100% |=========================| 941 kB
00:24
(2/43): koffice-kivio-1.5 100% |=========================| 1.3 MB
00:35
(3/43): graveman-0.3.12.4 100% |=========================| 702 kB
00:17
(4/43): koffice-kpresente 100% |=========================| 2.9 MB
01:16
(5/43): gwget-0.97-3.fc5. 100% |=========================| 216 kB
00:05
(6/43): jabberd-2.0-0.s11 100% |=========================| 561 kB
00:14
(7/43): qalculate-kde-0.9 100% |=========================| 1.1 MB
00:28
(8/43): dia-0.94-21.i386. 100% |=========================| 2.9 MB
01:14
(9/43): lyx-1.4.0-5.fc5.i 100% |=========================| 4.2 MB
01:50
(10/43): gparted-0.2.3-1. 100% |=========================| 424 kB
00:10
(11/43): azureus-2.4.0.3- 100% |=========================| 9.8 MB
04:13
(12/43): python-imaging-1 100% |=========================| 406 kB
00:10
(13/43): koffice-kexi-1.5 100% |=========================| 3.6 MB
01:37
(14/43): koffice-kplato-1 100% |=========================| 909 kB
00:22
(15/43): ircd-hybrid-7.2. 100% |=========================| 612 kB
00:15
(16/43): rssowl-1.2-13.fc 100% |=========================| 3.0 MB
01:18
(17/43): vnstat-1.4-7.fc5 100% |=========================|  38 kB
00:01
(18/43): qalculate-gtk-0. 100% |=========================| 1.3 MB
00:37
(19/43): koffice-suite-1. 100% |=========================| 4.3 kB
00:00
(20/43): mediawiki-math-1 100% |=========================| 131 kB
00:05
(21/43): brightside-1.4.0 100% |=========================| 118 kB
00:02
(22/43): libqalculate-0.9 100% |=========================| 875 kB
00:24
(23/43): wine-0.9.11-1.fc 100% |=========================| 9.7 MB
04:11
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
    yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 175, in main
    base.doTransaction()
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 660, in doTransaction
    problems = self.downloadPkgs(downloadpkgs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 663, in
downloadPkgs
    cache=repo.http_caching != 'none',
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/repos.py", line 626, in get
    http_headers=headers,
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py", line
411, in urlgrab
    return self._mirror_try(func, url, kw)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py", line
397, in _mirror_try
    return func_ref( *(fullurl,), **kwargs )
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line
784, in urlgrab
    return self._retry(opts, retryfunc, url, filename)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line
702, in _retry
    r = apply(func, (opts,) + args, {})
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line
772, in retryfunc
    fo._do_grab()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line
1102, in _do_grab
    os.utime(self.filename, (modified_stamp, modified_stamp))
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'//var/cache/yum/extras/packages/wine-0.9.11-1.fc5.i386.rpm'

I can't at all reproduce this here -- the only time I can get packages removed
is if there is a successful installation.

Can you provide complete steps for easy reproducing?

Confirmed here. Yum just killed my packages directory with about 500MB
downloaded after a crash. Message similar to comment 3, but for a different package.

This should be handled better now