Description of problem:

'man yum' says among other things:

       -c [config file]
              Specifies the config file location - can take http, ftp urls and
              local file paths.

This indeed _was_ the case with yum in FC3 and FC4; at least for http.
Today I had an opportunity to look at that in a situation when I controlled
both communication ends and yum refused to recognize anything but
local files.  With every URL in a form http://.... or ftp://....
it was always "No such file or directory" even if they were there.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
yum-2.6.1-0.fc5