newbie "retrygrab() failed for:" question. self-sovled, no need to respond fyi only

sorry for the intrusion.  i solved my problem while writing this.  so this is for future ref / for others use.  there is no need to respond.

i've set up a core 5 box to act as a local yum repo.  apache 2 is running and i've copied the yum-vhost file and put it under /etc/httpd/conf.d.  i also made changes to the directory section as follows:

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/yum/9/update/all
<Directory " /var/www/html/yum/9/update/all">

for testing purposes i've turned off the firewall on the box.  i also created under the ../all directory above a directory called RPMS where i placed a single rpm for testing purposes.

the client is using an older version of yum (the clients are rh9) so i ran yum-arch to create the headers directory and file.  the headers directory is under the ../all directory along with the RPMS.

on the test client i changed the yum.conf file to point only to the local repo box.  as these are on a test net i have an rfc 1918 address assigned to it.  i also have given it a host name/domain for test purposes only as "yum.example.int".  i also placed an html file in the directory with the header file for test purposes.  the client config file is as follows:
...variables...
[localrepo]
name=yum
baseurl=http://yum.example.int/var/www/html/yum/9/update/all

whenever i try to run a basic yum command what i see is:
[root@ManaFlare etc]# yum info
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: yum
retrygrab() failed for:
  http://yum.example.int/var/www/html/yum/9/update/all/headers/header.info
  Executing failover method
failover: out of servers to try
Error getting file http://yum.example.int/var/www/html/yum/9/update/all/headers/header.info
[Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found

this is where i banged head repeatedly because the file is where the error message says it isn't.  and i can access an html page in that same directory from a browser, so the name resolution thingee is working fine.  to be sure i tried its ip address direct.  i've changed yum client versions until it required dependencies that these little guys can't handle.  in desperation i even replaced http services with ftp via vsftp.  no luck there either dealing with passive port hopping and it was just another level of frustration i didn't need right now.

<while sane do .... bang head ..... end sane> 

the resolution, probably it jumps out at everyone else, is that the apache box has a default path for where it begins looking for the url you are requesting.  in my case the url is relative to /var/www/html.  so when it receives the url request from yum it prepends that path so it interprets the yum request to by /var/www/html/var/www/html/yum/9/update/all/headers/header.info, which isn't there and so it 404's.

by truncating the redundant part of the url from the yum.conf file i was able to achieve success as below:
[root@ManaFlare etc]# yum info
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: yum
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
getting /var/cache/yum/localrepo/headers/wine-0-0.9.2-1fc4winehq.i686.hdr
wine-0-0.9.2-1fc4winehq.i 100% |=========================|  15 kB    00:00
Name   : wine
Arch   : i686
Version: 0.9.2
Release: 1fc4winehq
Size   : 62.09 MB
Group  : Applications/Emulators
Repo   : yum
Summary: A Windows 16/32 bit emulator.
Description:
 While Wine is usually thought of as a Windows(TM) emulator, the Wine
developers would prefer that users thought of Wine as a Windows
compatibility layer for UNIX. This package includes a program loader,
which allows unmodified Windows 3.1/95/NT binaries to run under Intel
Unixes. Wine does not require MS Windows, but it can use native system
.dll files if they are available.

the before conf
...variables...
[localrepo]
name=yum
baseurl=http://yum.example.int/var/www/html/yum/9/update/all 

here is how the yum.conf now looks for the client:
...variables...
[localrepo]
name=yum
baseurl=http://yum.example.int/yum/9/update/all

that was a headbanger, but maybe not for anyone who has worked with local repos before.  hope it is of help to someone else.  i saw nothing like this in any of the many, many docs and message threads i read.  yes, i'm a bit rusty.

thanks.
garrett