A yum repository (or “repo” for short) is a collection of RPMs in a single location, for example, on a web site or in a directory on a DVD. In RHEL 6.0 Snapshot 12 there are 5 repositories:
1. HighAvailability
2. LoadBalancer
3. ResilientStorage
4. ScalableFileSystem
5. Server
The Server repo is the main repo with the usual packages (httpd, glibc, bash, coreutils, etc). The other 4 are specialty add-on repos for packages; for example, to help with a Load Balancing web server.
There may be cases when you can not update the server using a satellite server or have a secure environment that will never be connected to the Internet but still needs to be updated. Well, there is a way out. You can locally mount the RHEL 6 DVD ISO and use it as your yum repository.
Configuring yum repository using locally mounted DVD
1. Mount the RHEL 6 installation ISO somewhere like /mnt, e.g.:
# mount -o loop rhel6.iso /mnt
2. Copy the media.repo file from the root of the mounted ISO to /etc/yum.repos.d/ and set the permissions. e.g.:
# cp /mnt/media.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel6dvd.repo # chmod 644 /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel6dvd.repo[re>
enabled=1 baseurl=file:///mnt/rhel6dvd/Server gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release
4. In the end, the new repo file could look like the following (though the media-id will be different depending on the version of RHEL):
[dvd-Server] name=DVD for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 Server mediaid=1359576196.686790 metadata_expire=-1 gpgcheck=1 cost=500 enabled=1 baseurl=file:///mnt/rhel6dvd/Server gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release
5. As a final step, it might be a good idea to run the command yum clean all once.
# yum clean all
How to add optional repositories
To configure access to the supplementary packages in the directories HighAvailability, LoadBalancer, ResilientStorage, and ScalableFileSystem, add additional repositories for them in the same file, e.g.:
[dvd-HighAvailability] mediaid=1359576196.686790 name=DVD for RHEL6 - HighAvailability baseurl=file:///mnt/rhel6dvd/HighAvailability gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release enabled=1 gpgcheck=1
[dvd-LoadBalancer] mediaid=1359576196.686790 name=DVD for RHEL6 - LoadBalancer baseurl=file:///mnt/rhel6dvd/LoadBalancer gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release enabled=1 gpgcheck=1
[dvd-ResilientStorage] mediaid=1359576196.686790 name=DVD for RHEL6 - ResilientStorage baseurl=file:///mnt/rhel6dvd/ResilientStorage gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release enabled=1 gpgcheck=1
[dvd-ScalableFileSystem] mediaid=1359576196.686790 name=DVD for RHEL6 - ScalableFileSystem baseurl=file:///mnt/rhel6dvd/ScalableFileSystem gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release enabled=1 gpgcheck=1