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Adding Red Hat DVD as a Repository

Introduction

You don't have a Red Hat subscription or simply no internet connection to connect to the NRH, yet you have the installation DVD that contains all the packages you need!

Here's how to add the DVD to the repository.

Configuration

DVD

Create a file in /etc/yum.repos.d/redhatcd.repo

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cp /media/RHEL/media.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/redhatcd.repo

And adapt it with this content:

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[InstallMedia]
name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1
mediaid=1305068199.328169
metadata_expire=-1
gpgcheck=0
cost=500
baseurl=file:///media/RHEL/Server

Now we'll clear the cache:

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yum clean all

That's it, now you can use yum with your DVD.

Local Repository

If you want to use a local repository, copy the "Server" folder from the DVD to a local folder (for example /home/repo/Server).

Now you need to install the createrepo-0.9.8-4.el6.noarch.rpm package (or another version), as well as all necessary dependencies:

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yum install createrepo

Then run this command if you're on Red Hat 6:

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createrepo -v /home/repo/Server

Or this command if you're on Red Hat 5:

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createrepo -d -s sha1 /home/repo/Server

Then create a file /etc/yum.repos.d/local.repo

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[InstallMedia]
name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1
mediaid=1305068199.328169
metadata_expire=-1
gpgcheck=0
cost=500
baseurl=file:///home/repo/Server/
enabled=1

You can check the list of repositories with the command:

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yum repolist

Then before installing a package, run:

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yum clean all

Remote Repository

You can install an httpd server, then put the "Server" folder from the DVD to use as a remote yum DVD repository. Here's an example of client-side configuration:

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[dvd-base]
name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux $releasever Beta - Base - $basearch - DVD
baseurl=http://server/repositories/rhel/$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-beta,file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release

For the server part, it's identical to the local configuration.

FAQ

[Errno -3] Error performing checksum

If you get this kind of message:

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http://server/repositories/rhws/5Client/i386/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno -3] Error performing checksum
Trying other mirror.
Error: failure: repodata/primary.xml.gz from dvd-base: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.

It's probably because you're running the createrepo command without the necessary arguments for Red Hat 5. Brief explanation:

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Because RPM packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are compressed using the XZ lossless data compression format, and may also be signed using alternative (and stronger) hash algorithms such as
SHA-256, it is not possible to run createrepo on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 to create the package metadata for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 packages.
The createrepo command relies on rpm to open and inspect the packages, and rpm on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is not able to open the improved Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 RPM package format.

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