This article builds on the article submitted by Hal Canary How to make a local yum repository mirror. This article can be used in conjunction with the aforementioned article, or on it's own in it's own right. Why is there a need to build a custom yum repository? I think this question is really quite easy to answer, whilst the vast majority of your requirements will be met by the standard released rpms, be them the base rpms or updates, there are some which quite simply are not supplied as standard, or those that are available from Red Hat /Fedora need to be customized. So how do you ensure that your non-standard rpms are updated across your managed systems, a simple answer is to use yum.
Using the article Upgrading MySQL version 3 to 4 RedHat / Fedora as a base. We will build a MySQL rpm, and customized php rpms. We will not go into the mechanics of creating these custom rpms. We are using the MySQL example as this provides an example of a new non Red Hat distributed rpm and some customized verions of Red Hat distributed rpms.
Note:
If the rpms are completely separate from those distributed by Red Hat
then the Release line in the source rpms spec file can be left as
the default value, however, if you are modifying the rpm of a Red Hat
distributed rpm you must alter the Release line of the spec
from say 1 to 1.MY4 before rebuilding the rpm using the
spec file.
You now have access to some customized or new rpms that you wish to distribute
system wide, and you have decided that the best way to do this is to use yum.
You now need to decide on the directory structure that you wish to use.
The set up that will be designed here is one in which the yum repository will be
accessed via a web server. hence the directory structure used will be
/var/www/html/fedora/linux/custom/updates/1/i386
Once the yum repository directory tree has been created, simply copy your custom and non Red Hat distributed rpms into this directory.
Even though all the rpms that we require are now in our new custom yum directory
they are still unusable through yum as it currently stands, basically we are still
missing the headers. To create the required headers simply
issue the following command:
yum-arch /var/www/html/fedora/linux/custom/updates/1/i386 [ENTER]
Issuing the above command will produce output similar to that shown below:
Digesting rpms 100 % complete: php-xmlrpc-4.3.4-1.1.MY4.i386.rpm
Total: 38
Used: 38
Src: 0
Writing header.info file
This now completes the yumification of your custom yum directory.
The only configuration step left to take, is to ensure the systems that you wish
to use the repository are configured to do so. This is a relatively simple task,
all that is required is that the following is inserted into /etc/yum.conf
[custom updates]
name=Fedora Core $releasever Custom Updates
baseurl=http://[YOUR WEBSERVER]/fedora/linux/custom/updates/$releasever/i386/
As can be seen, combining this mini-tutorial, with Hal Canary's howto, illustrates how you can also minimize your own bandwith usage, by having your own onsite yum mirror that is synchronized once every 24 hours, when your bandwith use is at it's minimum. Your systems then use your local mirror, along with your local custom rpm yum repository for updates.
As you are now aware this is a very simple implementation, however you must take into account the follwing:
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