Topic: 7.0pre3 yum default repositories

[dmay]

I felt this thread warranted a continuation in this forum. I agree with the default change to limit active repositories. Makes sense. In fact I do not see any reason to ever leave a non default repository enabled. This is dangerous and most likely will wreck havoc with the Server Manager, Software installer.

As Gordon mentioned, if you know which repository needs enabling, you can do so temporarily with:

# yum --enablerepo=repository blah...

You can find all the default repository names with:

# db yum_repositories show

If you do not know which repository a particular rpm resides in you can also go look for it across all repositories. As an example, say you wanted to find what versions of php you have installed and what's available. You could use:

# yum --enablerepo=* list php*

As another example, say you wanted to list all available updates, across all repositories:

# yum --enablerepo=* list updates

The bottom line is yum is very powerful and should be used cautiously. No need to permanently enable non-standard repos with db changes. If you do need a particular non standard rpm, use the above list commands to see if it is available in the repos. Once you find it and determine it is wise to proceed, you can temporarily enable just the repo you need and install the rpm. At your own risk of course.

Darrell

[gordonr]

I felt this thread warranted a continuation in this forum. I agree with the default change to limit active repositories. Makes sense. In fact I do not see any reason to ever leave a non default repository enabled. This is dangerous and most likely will wreck havoc with the Server Manager, Software installer.

I agree. The only downside is that you won't see updates for packages in disabled repositories. However, as you said, adding extra packages is at your own risk and enabling additional repositories may result in updates you don't want (e.g. a kernel update when the additional modules are not yet available).

We plan to keep up-to-date on CentOS updates for packages on the CD, but if you install additional software you will need to check for updates. The tools are there, but we chose "stable" as the default.

[mdo]

I think it's important to remind about the "localinstall" feature of yum.

There was an example using Hylafax (from Greg?) which shows this the following way:

wget ftp://ftp.hylafax.org/binary/linux/redhat/RPMS/i386/hylafax-4.2.5-1rhel4.i386.rpm

yum --enablerepo=base --enablerepo=updates localinstall hylafax-4.2.5-1rhel4.i386.rpm

This way avoids the former "rpm -ivh" or "rpm -Uvh" and as far as I understand it keeps every installed package in the log files therefore it is much easier to find out, what packages have been added or updated at any later stage.

Michael