There's a bug observed in RHEL testing which we assume to be present in Fedora 16 as well.

"When installing packages in "%post" section of kickstart installation or
manually in chroot before restarting the installation, yum throws a traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in <module>
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 276, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 211, in main
    return_code = base.doTransaction()
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 586, in doTransaction
    resultobject = self.runTransaction(cb=cb)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 1436, in
runTransaction
    lastdbv = self.history.last()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/history.py", line 1259, in last
    ret = self.old([], 1, complete_transactions_only)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/history.py", line 1208, in old
    executeSQL(cur, sql, params)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/sqlutils.py", line 166, in
executeSQLQmark
    return cursor.execute(query)
sqlite3.OperationalError: database is locked"

"Looking through the patches changed from -17 to -18 I see this which feels
completely dead on:


-- a/yum/history.py
+++ b/yum/history.py
@@ -627,6 +627,14 @@ class YumHistory:
                 self.conf.readable = False
                 return None

+            #  Note that this is required due to changing the history DB in
the
+            # callback for removed txmbrs ... which happens inside the chroot,
+            # as against all our other access which is outside the chroot. So
+            # we need sqlite to not open the journal.
+            #  In theory this sucks, as history could be shared. In reality
+            # it's deep yum stuff and there should only be one yum.
+            executeSQL(self._conn.cursor(), "PRAGMA locking_mode = EXCLUSIVE")
+
         return self._conn.cursor()
     def _commit(self):

Since at the point in the anaconda run you have 2 yums (sorta) one inside
anaconda and the one you're execing in %post."

This is a significant issue for kickstart installs. Proposing as Beta blocker (to feed into the discussion we need to have on kickstart criteria) and marking as CommonBugs.