Probably spoke too soon.
Have another problem on another VE container:
[root@radiowave ~]# vzyum 202 install yum
exec /usr/bin/yum -c /vz/template/centos/4/i386/config/yum.conf --installroot /vz/root/202 install yum
rpmdb: Program version 4.3 doesn't match environment version
error: db4 error(-30974) from dbenv->open: DB_VERSION_MISMATCH: Database environment version mismatch
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - (-30974)
error: cannot open Packages database in /vz/root/202/var/lib/rpm
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 85, in main
base.getOptionsConfig(args)
File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 163, in getOptionsConfig
disabled_plugins=self.optparser._splitArg(opts.disableplugins))
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 164, in _getConfig
self._conf = config.readMainConfig(startupconf)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 685, in readMainConfig
yumvars['releasever'] = _getsysver(startupconf.installroot, startupconf.distroverpkg)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 755, in _getsysver
idx = ts.dbMatch('provides', distroverpkg)
TypeError: rpmdb open failed
http://pastie.org/248272