How To Set Up A Local Yum Repository On Fedora

1 Preliminary Note
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In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate. 

I want to make the yum repository accessible through http; Apache's default document root on Fedora is /var/www/html, so I'll create the repository in /var/www/html/yum. If you're using a different vhost, you might have to adjust the paths.

2 Installing Apache
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Let's install Apache:

yum install httpd

Afterwards, we create the system startup links for Apache (so that Apache starts automatically when the system boots):

chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on

Then we start Apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

3 Building The Repository
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First we install the tool createrepo:

yum install createrepo

I want to place the Fedora 8 rpm packages for i386 in /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386 and the update packages in /var/www/html/yum/updates/8/i386, so I create these directories now (adjust the paths if you want to create a repository for Fedora 7/6/... and/or x86_64):

mkdir -p /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386
mkdir -p /var/www/html/yum/updates/8/i386

Now let's fill the /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386 directory. The easiest way is to insert your Fedora 8 DVD (which you can download from here: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlists/publiclist/Fedora/8), mount it, and copy the rpm packages to /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386:

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
cd /mnt/Packages
cp -v * /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386
cd /
umount /mnt

The DVD contains just a basic set of packages. If you'd like to have all available Fedora 8 packages in the /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386 directory, you can download the packages (using rsync) from the Everything folder on a Fedora 8 mirror. Go to http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlists/publiclist/Fedora/8, find a mirror that offers rsync, and download the packages as follows (this can take a long time so be patient):

rsync -avrt rsync://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/ /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386

(Please make sure you use all slashes (/) as shown above - it must be rsync://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/, not rsync://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages!)

Afterwards, run the createrepo command:

createrepo /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386

This will create a repodata directory in the /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386 directory. Its contents should be as follows:

ls -l /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386/repodata/

[root@server1 /]# ls -l /var/www/html/yum/base/8/i386/repodata/
total 9268
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2227275 2007-12-18 21:11 filelists.xml.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6487453 2007-12-18 21:11 other.xml.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 747714 2007-12-18 21:11 primary.xml.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 951 2007-12-18 21:11 repomd.xml
[root@server1 /]#

Now let's fill the updates directory /var/www/html/yum/updates/8/i386. Go to http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlists/publiclist/Fedora/8 again, find a mirror that offers rsync, and download the packages as follows:

rsync -avrt rsync://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/fedora/linux/updates/8/i386/ --exclude=debug/ /var/www/html/yum/updates/8/i386

Again, make sure that you use the slashes (/) as shown above! 

To make our local mirror download the latest updates automatically from now on, we can create a cron job. For example, to download the latest updates every second day at 04:23h, we create the following cron job:

crontab -e

23 4 */2 * * /usr/bin/rsync -avrt rsync://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/fedora/linux/updates/8/i386/ --exclude=debug/ /var/www/html/yum/updates/8/i386

Our local yum mirror is now ready to be used.

4 Client Configuration
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To make our Fedora 8 systems use the new local yum repository, we modify /etc/yum.conf on each Fedora 8 system (you can even do this on the mirror itself if it is a Fedora 8 system). Open /etc/yum.conf:

vi /etc/yum.conf

Find these two lines...# PUT YOUR REPOS HERE OR IN separate files named file.repo
# in /etc/yum.repos.d

... and add the following stanzas below these lines:[base-local]

name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://192.168.0.100/yum/base/$releasever/$basearch
#mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

[updates-local]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch - Updates
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://192.168.0.100/yum/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
#mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

The complete file should look like this:[main]

cachedir=/var/cache/yum
keepcache=0
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
exactarch=1
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=1
plugins=1
metadata_expire=1800
installonly_limit=2

# PUT YOUR REPOS HERE OR IN separate files named file.repo
# in /etc/yum.repos.d

[base-local]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://192.168.0.100/yum/base/$releasever/$basearch
#mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

[updates-local]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch - Updates
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://192.168.0.100/yum/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
#mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Now whenever you use yum and your local repository can serve the requested packages, the packages are downloaded and installed from the local yum repository