The Smallest Example

Let us begin creating a foo repository in the web server containing a single software package, for instance, the package htop:

  • Create a folder called foo in /var/www/html

  • Download htop with the command yumdownloader

Note

yumdownloader may not be available in your system. You could figure which package provides it with the command yum provides yumdownloader.

[root@master ~]# mkdir /var/www/html/foo
[root@master ~]# cd /var/www/html/foo
[root@master foo]# yumdownloader htop
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: distro.ibiblio.org
 * epel: fedora-epel.mirror.lstn.net
 * extras: linux.cc.lehigh.edu
 * updates: centos.mirrors.tds.net
htop-2.2.0-3.el7.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                            | 103 kB  00:00:00

  • Create the repository.

[root@master foo]# createrepo .

Up to this point, the local repository is ready to be used. Be sure to execute the command createrepo every time any package is added or removed from the repository folder. Let us now use the repository in one of the compute nodes.

  • In node c01 create a .repo file as shown below. The .repo file can have any name of your choice, just place it in the directory /etc/yum.repos.d.

Warning

Please check the folder /etc/yum.repos.d on the compute nodes and delete any existent CentOS-*.repo file.

[root@c01 ~]# cat /etc/yum.repos.d/foo.repo

[foo]
name=foo
baseurl=http://192.168.16.1/foo
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
priority=1

  • Verify that the foo repository exists:

[root@c01 ~]# yum repolist
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
repo id                     repo name              status
core-0                      core-0                 10,019
foo                         foo                         1
repolist: 10,020

  • Check the list of packages of the foo repository, htop should be listed:

[root@c01 ~]# yum update
...
[root@c01 ~]# yum repo-pkgs foo list
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Installed Packages
htop.x86_64                 2.2.0-3.el7             @foo

  • Install the package:

[root@c01 ~]# yum install htop

The procedure we showed here to use local repositories in the compute nodes can be simplified if we take advantage of Cobbler’s capabilities to manage local software repositories. In the following section we will show you how to use these capabilities.