Hello Phorbidden,
Let me to try to reply on your questions:
1. I would like to update to httpd 2.2.8 but it seems that the repositories for centOS do not list it as an update. Is there any other way to accomplish this?
You can build it manually from sources or try to find 3rd party repositories for CentOS or Redhat Enteprise linux as these two distro's are compatible.
2. I would like to get BCmath installed for php and when I run "yum update php-bcmath" I get the following:
Error: Missing Dependency: libc-client.so.1 is needed by package dsmphp
Error: Missing Dependency: ming is needed by package dsmphp
Error: Missing Dependency: dsmapache >= 1.3.31 is needed by package dsmphp
Error: Missing Dependency: libswf is needed by package dsmphp
Error: Missing Dependency: libsybdb.so.4 is needed by package mdsphp
It looks like there is already installed or being tried to install mdsphp package which has some unresolved dependencies.
3. Every time I run yum I get the following line:
Warning, could not load sqlite, falling back to pickle
Do you have python-sqlite rpm installed?