I am trying to inall the yum installer ( yum-2.2.0-1.noarch.rpm ) from http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/download/2.2/

Which distribution (and version) are you using?

rpm -ivh yum-2.2.0-1.noarch.rpm

I do not know why you need 2.2.0, because 3.2.x has been the current series for sometime now.

Cheerio, Debarshi