Installing Yum and RPM without either pre-installed (no rpm2cpio available)

[Swizzlestix]

I've spent a good portion of today attempting to work out how to get both RPM and Yum installed on my Linux VPS via a SSH and I'm finally willing to admit I'm completely lost in the mass of instructions apparently necessary to do so. If there's some simple solution to the above problem, I can't find it.

I have a Linux dedicated VPS running CentOS 5 86_64 that, for some reason, did not come equipped with either Yum commands nor RPM. After a thorough search, I discovered that to install one, you generally needed the other. After looking around a little more, I found a guide on how to install both, in the circumstance you ended up without either; unfortunately it required the 'rpm2cpio' command, which cannot be found either, apparently.

I have no doubt in my ability to read and execute instructions, as I have overcome all difficulties with my Linux VPS to date, but if there is a simpler solution to fixing this current problem, then I can't find it. Don't feel the need to completely dumb-down instructions, I'll make sense of them and won't beat around the bush if they still confuse me; I'm just looking for a straightforward method of installing both Yum and RPM without either already installed, and without the rpm2cpio command. Hell, even a tip into how to get the rpm2cpio command working would be enough at this stage.

Thanks in advance!

Jay

EDIT: typo fix

[TrevorH]

Worth reading these I suspect

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/OtherSpins
http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/BrokenVserver

You should however be aware that they may have removed it for a reason - probably to stop you from updating packages which might overwrite things which their implementation of a "VPS" is dependent on - so installing them and updating the system may well break it.

Perhaps time to look for a VPS provider who will actually provide CentOS?

[Swizzlestix]

Thanks for the quick response! I'll be sure to look into that.