Local CentOS YUM Repository

Especially when working in lab environments it is somethings a lot easier to be able to define a local file repository in CentOS or Red Hat systems to ensure that you can easily install software at a later date without access to the internet or DVD. In this first lesson we look at creating a local yum repository and then in a later lesson we will share that out with HTTP to make it available to other hosts.

• Create the directory structure to support the repo. We will create a top level directory names /repo and then a sub directory names rhel64x86 for the 32 bit version we are using. we can add a 64 bit directory to support those clients running 64 bit systems : mkdir -p /repo/rhel64x86
• On CentOS 6 we copy the dvd:/Packages directory on CentOS 5 we would copy the dvd:/CentOS directory: rsync -av /mnt/Packages/*.rpm /repo/rehel64x86/
• While you still have another repo available install the createrepo package: yum install -y createrepo
• Move into the /repo/rehel64x86/ and create the repository metadata: createrepo . [dot being the current directory]
• Remove the current repos : rm -f /etc/yum.repo.d/*
• Create a new repo file[rhel6.3-local]

  name=RHEL 6.4 local repository

  baseurl=file:///repo/rhel64x86

  gpgcheck=0

  enabled=1

• Now we can clear the yum cache and list the new repo: yum clean all ; yum repolist

Watch the video for more: