Overview of yum

In Red Hat flavor linux such as Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora etc softwares can be installed using yum.

  • There are some standard repositories served by Red Hat or CentOS or Fedora communities.
  • Files with extension of repo under /etc/yum.repos.d act as configuration files related to repositories using which softwares can be setup.
  • yum install command takes care of following tasks on the server
    • Download software
    • Install software
    • Some times start daemon process associated with software
  • Some important commands
    • yum repolist
    • yum list all
    • yum install
    • yum update
    • yum remove
  • We need to update configuration files of underlying software before starting daemon process. Configuration files will be typically available under /etc.
  • In larger enterprises we might have hundreds to even thousands of servers. If we use standard repositories connecting to internet, there can be certain issues.
    • Security
    • Slow as it uses public internet
  • To overcome these issues, enterprises typically have local repository servers from which yum requests such as install and update can be served.
  • Steps to set up local yum repository server with in an organization
    • Setup apache web server or nginx
    • Download repo configuration file
    • Create repo
    • Generate repo configuration files pointing to local yum repository server and then copy configuration files to other servers with in organization.
    • We will see example later.

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