If you try to run a command with too many command line arguments, youget an 'Argument list too long' error (technically you get an E2BIG error from the kernel, which is then mapped into this error string byyour shell). There's a bunch of workarounds for this problem, such asusing xargs .

However, the error message is actually somewhat misleading. As oldUnix hands know (and new ones generally don't), the kernel's sizelimit on exec(

In theory, the yumdownloader program that is part of the yum-utils package will download the source RPMs if you want it to. In practice Ispent a long time having it not work on my Fedora Core 6 machines, untilI read yet another bland bit of advice telling me to use it and decidedto figure out just what was going on.

(The problem was quite frustrating, because yumdownloader nevercomplained; it just silently did nothing.)

It turns out that the trick is that you need to specifically