diff -up yum-utils-1.1.31/needs-restarting.py.old yum-utils-1.1.31/needs-restarting.py
--- yum-utils-1.1.31/needs-restarting.py.old	2014-09-18 10:17:13.000000000 +0200
+++ yum-utils-1.1.31/needs-restarting.py	2014-09-18 10:22:41.596236067 +0200
@@ -44,6 +44,7 @@ import yum.misc
 import glob
 import stat
 from optparse import OptionParser
+from yum.Errors import RepoError
 sys.path.insert(0,'/usr/share/yum-cli')
 import utils
 
@@ -82,7 +83,7 @@ def get_open_files(pid):
         with open(smaps, 'r') as maps_f:
             maps = maps_f.readlines()
     except (IOError, OSError), e:
-        print "Could not open %s" % smaps
+        print >>sys.stderr, "Could not open %s" % smaps
         return files
 
     for line in maps:
@@ -164,7 +165,7 @@ def main(args):
         try:
             cmdline = open('/proc/' +pid+ '/cmdline', 'r').read()
         except (OSError, IOError), e:
-            print "Couldn't access process information for %s: %s" % (pid, str(e))
+            print >>sys.stderr, "Couldn't access process information for %s: %s" % (pid, str(e))
             continue
         # proc cmdline is null-delimited so clean that up
         cmdline = cmdline.replace('\000', ' ')
@@ -173,4 +174,8 @@ def main(args):
     return 0
     
 if __name__ == "__main__":
-    sys.exit(main(sys.argv))
+    try:
+        sys.exit(main(sys.argv))
+    except RepoError, e:
+        print >>sys.stderr, e
+        sys.exit(1)