If your Red Hat server is not connected to the official RHN repositories, you will need to configure your own private repository which you can later use to install packages. The procedure of creating a Red Hat Linux repository is quite a simple task. In this article, we will show you how to create a local file Red Hat repository as well as a remote HTTP repository.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to use official Red Hat DVD as repository
- How to create a local file Red Hat repository
- How to create a remote HTTP Red Hat repository
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Red Hat |
| Software | createrepo |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Using official Red Hat DVD as repository
After default installation and without registering your server to official RHN repositories your are left without any chance to install new packages from Red Hat repository as your repository list will show 0 entries:
# dnf repolist Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, security, subscription-manager This system is not registered to Red Hat Subscription Management. You can use subscription-manager to register. repolist: 0
At this point the easiest thing to do is to attach your Red Hat installation DVD as a local repository. To do that, first make sure that your RHEL DVD is mounted:
# mount | grep iso9660 /dev/sr0 on /media/RHEL_6.4 x86_64 Disc 1 type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=500,gid=500,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500)
The directory which most interests us at the moment is /media/RHEL_6.4 x86_64 Disc 1/repodata as this is the directory which contains information about all packages found on this particular DVD disc.
Next we need to define our new repository pointing to /media/RHEL_6.4 x86_64 Disc 1/ by creating a repository entry in /etc/yum.repos.d/. Create a new file called: /etc/yum.repos.d/RHEL_6.4_Disc.repo using vi editor and insert the following text:
[RHEL_6.4_Disc] name=RHEL_6.4_x86_64_Disc baseurl="file:///media/RHEL_6.4 x86_64 Disc 1/" gpgcheck=0
Once file was created your local Red Hat DVD repository should be ready to use:
# dnf repolist Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, security, subscription-manager This system is not registered to Red Hat Subscription Management. You can use subscription-manager to register. repo id repo name status RHEL_6.4_Disc RHEL_6.4_x86_64_Disc 3,648 repolist: 3,648
Creating a local file Red Hat repository
Normally, having a Red Hat DVD repository will be enough to get you started; however, the only disadvantage is that you are not able to alter your repository in any way and thus not able to insert new/updated packages into it. To resolve this issue, we can create a local file repository sitting somewhere on the filesystem. To aid us with this plan we will use a createrepo utility.
- Start by installing the
createrepoon your system if it isn’t already installed.# dnf install createrepo
- At this stage we are ready to create our own Red Hat local file repository. Create a new directory called
/rhel_repo:# mkdir /rhel_repo
- Next, copy all packages from your mounted RHEL DVD to your new directory:
# cp /media/RHEL_6.4\ x86_64\ Disc\ 1/Packages/* /rhel_repo/
- When copy is finished execute createrepo command with a single argument which is your new local repository directory name:
# createrepo /rhel_repo/ Spawning worker 0 with 3648 pkgs Workers Finished Gathering worker results Saving Primary metadata Saving file lists metadata Saving other metadata Generating sqlite DBs Sqlite DBs complete
- As the last step, we will create a new yum repository entry by editing this file:
# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel_repo.repo
And inserting this text:
[rhel_repo] name=RHEL_6.4_x86_64_Local baseurl="file:///rhel_repo/" gpgcheck=0
- Your new repository should now be accessible:
# dnf repolist Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, security, subscription-manager This system is not registered to Red Hat Subscription Management. You can use subscription-manager to register. rhel_repo | 2.9 kB 00:00 ... rhel_repo/primary_db | 367 kB 00:00 ... repo id repo name status RHEL_6.4_Disc RHEL_6.4_x86_64_Disc 3,648 rhel_repo RHEL_6.4_x86_64_Local 3,648
Creating a remote HTTP Red Hat repository
If you have multiple Red Hat servers, you may want to create a single Red Hat repository accessible by all other servers on the network. For this you will need Apache web server. If you need help getting Apache set up, check our guide about installing Apache on RHEL.
In order to make your new repository accessible via http configure your Apache with /rhel_repo/ directory created in previous section as document root directory or simply copy entire directory to: /var/www/html/ (default document root).
- First, create a new yum repository entry on your client system by creating a new repo configuration file:
# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel_http_repo.repo
with the following content, where the host is an IP address or hostname of your Red Hat repository server:
[rhel_repo_http] name=RHEL_6.4_x86_64_HTTP baseurl="http://myhost/rhel_repo/" gpgcheck=0
- Confirm the correctness of your new repository by running the
dnf repolistcommand.# dnf repolist Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, security, subscription-manager This system is not registered to Red Hat Subscription Management. You can use subscription-manager to register. repo id repo name status rhel_repo_http RHEL_6.4_x86_64_HTTP 3,648 repolist: 3,648
Closing Thoughts
Creating your own package repository gives you more options on how to manage packages on your Red Hat system even without paid RHN subscription. When using a remote HTTP Red Hat repository you may also want to configure GPGCHECK as part of your repository to make sure that no packages had been tampered to prior their installation.