CENTOS 6.6 "Errno -1 repomd.xml does not match metalink for updates " when trying to use yum command to install openssl

Question

Platform: CentOS release 6.6 (Final)
When I am trying to yum install openssl, I get this error:

epel 4 kB 00:00
http://mirror.symnds.com/distributions/fedora-epel/6/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno -1] repomd.xml does not match metalink for epel Trying other mirror.

I have tried : yum clean all, yum info kernel.

But I still see a similar error

epel | 4.4 kB 00:00
http://mirror.symnds.com/distributions/fedora-epel/6/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno -1] repomd.xml does not match metalink for epel Trying other mirror.

It looks like I cannot use the yum command to install anything. I have also used yum clean all then yum makecache but I still see the same problem.

Why do I see this error:

[Errno -1] repomd.xml does not match metalink for epel

And how do I fix it?

Solution: Uncomment the baseurl(or add baseurl if it does not exist) and comment out the mirrorlist. This is my temporary workaround in the /etc/yum.repo.d/epel.repo:

[epel]  
name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - $basearch
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-6
baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/$basearch
#mirrorlist=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-6&arch=$basearch
sslverify=true

Solution

I was just running into the same thing. Found elsewhere on the net that it might mean that the mirrors are currently resynchronizing.

I got around it by editing /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo and uncommenting the baseurl lines and commenting out the mirrorlist lines.

You'll probably want to undo that later.