encyclo - 11:17 am on Nov 20, 2008 (gmt 0)

2.6.11-6mdk

This indicates that you might be using the Mandriva distribution: [mandriva.com...] . Mandriva uses the urpmi command and not yum (which is for Red Hat/Fedora).

You are probably using version 10.2, which dates from a few years back (2005). Mandriva has release many new versions since then, it is unlikely that you will be able to easily upgrade PHP and MySQL without compiling them manually - and even then matching the dependencies will be a challenge.

So as I said above, you really need an OS upgrade. Is this a dedicated server? Who supplies and manages it?