Description of problem:
Any yum commands end with the prompt "Error: no such table: packages". A google research tells me to clean up the yum cache and try again but this process does not help in any way.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. yum clean all
2. yum makecache
3. yum check-updates

At the third step I got the following stack trace:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 309, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 178, in main
    result, resultmsgs = base.doCommands()
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 345, in doCommands
    self._getTs(needTsRemove)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 101, in _getTs
    self._getTsInfo(remove_only)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 112, in _getTsInfo
    pkgSack = self.pkgSack
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 662, in <lambda>
    pkgSack = property(fget=lambda self: self._getSacks(),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 502, in _getSacks
    self.repos.populateSack(which=repos)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/repos.py", line 260, in populateSack
    sack.populate(repo, mdtype, callback, cacheonly)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 168, in populate
    if self._check_db_version(repo, mydbtype):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 226, in _check_db_version
    return repo._check_db_version(mdtype)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1226, in _check_db_version
    repoXML = self.repoXML
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1399, in <lambda>
    repoXML = property(fget=lambda self: self._getRepoXML(),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1391, in _getRepoXML
    self._loadRepoXML(text=self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1381, in _loadRepoXML
    return self._groupLoadRepoXML(text, ["primary"])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1366, in _groupLoadRepoXML
    self._commonRetrieveDataMD(mdtypes)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1343, in _commonRetrieveDataMD
    misc.bunzipFile(dl_local, local)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/misc.py", line 615, in bunzipFile
    data = s_fn.read(1024000)
EOFError: compressed file ended before the logical end-of-stream was detected

Regarding this stack trace and the fact I am using a clean cache I would suggest that something is not build properly so that it is not possible to decompross it. Furthermore I have added a simple "print source" in "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/misc.py". So I got an output regarding sqlite.

epel                                                                                                                                                                                                                  | 3.6 kB     00:00
epel/primary_db                                                                                                                                                                                                       | 2.9 MB     00:00
/var/cache/yum/epel/db9985946b749cb63ab71416a79b1c382c449d3a-primary.sqlite.bz2
...
stack trace as you can see above.