[vserver] CentOS-5 Guest on Debian-lenny host (repost)

Hi,

what is the best way to cleanly install a centos-5.3 guest on a debian-lenny
host?

My way:

I tried to use the lenny yum (3.2.12), but that version can't cope with the
gpg-signatures (python error). For this version I didn't apply the patches,
since there are no patches for this version and looking at the patches I
concluded, that the patches address the chroot-handling and not the problems I
had with the gpg-signatures.

Then I installed squeeze yum (3.2.23). Despite the warnings from
vserver build ... the installation succeeded. After internatlizing the packet-
management, starting and entering the vserver, I wanted to use vim to make
some adjustments, but vim wasn't installed, neither yum itself. So I edited
the package list in util-vserver and installed a fresh one, then having yum
and vim ready.

But inside the vserver yum doesn't work because the $releasever isn't set
($basearch is!). I succeed editing the CentOS.repo and substituting
$releasever with 5.3.

So finally, my questions are:

i) is there a patched version of yum available as debian package for lenny?

ii) why is yum broken inside the centos-vserver?

Regards,

-- 
Wilhelm