Making persistent changes

[genesee]

Howdy,
I would like my two favorite yum packages, mc and gnubg, survive olpc-update.
Making persistent changes as per http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Yum does
not work for me, (CL1, Build joyride-2436, Sugar 0.82.1, Firmware
Q2E17).
"Then, as root:
# yum install yum-utils
Then, as the olpc user:
$ mkdir -p /home/olpc/.custom/rpms
$ cd /home/olpc/.custom/rpms
$ yumdownloader --resolve <pkgname>
$ rpm -Uvh *.rpm"
This happens:
[olpc at xo-0C-ED-8B ~]$ su -l
su: warning: cannot change directory to /root: No such file or directory
-bash-3.2# yum install yum-utils
Excluding Packages from Fedora 9 - i386 - Updates Newkey
Finished
Excluding Packages from Fedora 9 - i386
Finished
Excluding Packages from OLPC development repository, based on koji tag
dist-olpc3-devel.
Finished
Excluding Packages from Fedora 9 - i386 - Updates
Finished
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package yum-utils.noarch 0:1.1.16-1.fc9 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: yum >= 3.2.19 for package: yum-utils
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
yum-utils-1.1.16-1.fc9.noarch from updates-newkey has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: yum >= 3.2.19 is needed by package
yum-utils-1.1.16-1.fc9.noarch (updates-newkey)
Error: Missing Dependency: yum >= 3.2.19 is needed by package
yum-utils-1.1.16-1.fc9.noarch (updates-newkey)

Yikes! No root directory? Missing Dependency?
Help?

Also, is there a way to make Adobe Flash survive olpc-update? While
Flash does not get wiped, rpm -i
flash-plugin-9.0.124.0-release.i386.rpm
needs to be done before Browse knows it's there.

¡Gracias!
               genesee