diff --git a/install_puppet.sh b/install_puppet.sh
index 4510cfa048..e210c018e1 100755
--- a/install_puppet.sh
+++ b/install_puppet.sh
@@ -216,6 +216,23 @@ function setup_pip {
 
     python get-pip.py -c <(echo 'pip<8')
     rm get-pip.py
+
+    # we are about to overwrite setuptools, but some packages we
+    # install later might depend on the python-setuptools package.  To
+    # avoid later conflicts, and because distro packages don't include
+    # enough info for pip to certain it can fully uninstall the old
+    # package, for saftey we clear it out by hand (this seems to have
+    # been a problem with very old to new updates, e.g. centos6 to
+    # current-era, but less so for smaller jumps).  There is a bit of
+    # chicken-and-egg problem with pip in that it requires setuptools
+    # for some operations, such as wheel creation.  But just
+    # installing setuptools shouldn't require setuptools itself, so we
+    # are safe for this small section.
+    if is_rhel7 || is_fedora; then
+        yum install -y python-setuptools
+        rm -rf /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools*
+    fi
+
     pip install -U setuptools
 }
 
diff --git a/modules/openstack_project/files/yum.conf b/modules/openstack_project/files/yum.conf
deleted file mode 100644
index 822efdd65c..0000000000
--- a/modules/openstack_project/files/yum.conf
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,27 +0,0 @@
-[main]
-cachedir=/var/cache/yum/$basearch/$releasever
-keepcache=0
-debuglevel=2
-logfile=/var/log/yum.log
-exactarch=1
-obsoletes=1
-gpgcheck=1
-plugins=1
-installonly_limit=5
-bugtracker_url=http://bugs.centos.org/set_project.php?project_id=16&ref=http://bugs.centos.org/bug_report_page.php?category=yum
-distroverpkg=centos-release
-exclude=python-setuptools
-
-#  This is the default, if you make this bigger yum won't see if the metadata
-# is newer on the remote and so you'll "gain" the bandwidth of not having to
-# download the new metadata and "pay" for it by yum not having correct
-# information.
-#  It is esp. important, to have correct metadata, for distributions like
-# Fedora which don't keep old packages around. If you don't like this checking
-# interupting your command line usage, it's much better to have something
-# manually check the metadata once an hour (yum-updatesd will do this).
-# metadata_expire=90m
-
-# PUT YOUR REPOS HERE OR IN separate files named file.repo
-# in /etc/yum.repos.d
-
diff --git a/modules/openstack_project/manifests/template.pp b/modules/openstack_project/manifests/template.pp
index bba0f5f1a9..dc12d04da9 100644
--- a/modules/openstack_project/manifests/template.pp
+++ b/modules/openstack_project/manifests/template.pp
@@ -420,14 +420,6 @@ class openstack_project::template (
       replace => true,
     }
 
-    file { '/etc/yum.conf':
-      ensure  => present,
-      owner   => 'root',
-      group   => 'root',
-      mode    => '0444',
-      source  => 'puppet:///modules/openstack_project/yum.conf',
-      replace => true,
-    }
   }
 
   $puppet_version = $pin_puppet