Setup and Enable EPEL Repository for RHEL and CentOS versions 7.* and 6.*

     I am going to walk you guys thru how we can install additional standard open source packages by using yum command.

For those curious:      EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is open source and free community based repository project from Fedora team which provides 100% high quality add-on software packages for Linux distribution including RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), CentOS, and Scientific Linux.

More info at EPEL. EPEL repository is great because it has lots of open source packages and most important is free !

So how can we use EPEL on our Linux machines?

We need to download the repository file using wget and install it using rpm on your system to enable the EPEL repository.

RHEL and CentOS versions 7.* - 64 Bits

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-7.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh epel-release-7-7.noarch.rpm

RHEL and CentOS versions 6.* - 64 Bits

wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

RHEL and CentOS versions 6.* - 32 Bits

wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

After install check if the repo is enabled

[root@prodvert01 ~]# yum repolist | grep epel
epel                 Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - x86_64       12,162

Now that we have it installed is time to use them

  • to use the EPEL repo you need to use the --enablerepo option when running the yum package installer.
[root@aodba]# yum --enablerepo=epel info htop

Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
This system is receiving updates from RHN Classic or RHN Satellite.
Installed Packages
Name        : htop
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 1.0.1
Release     : 2.el6
Size        : 161 k
Repo        : installed
From repo   : epel
Summary     : Interactive process viewer
URL         : http://htop.sourceforge.net/
License     : GPL+
Description : htop is an interactive text-mode process viewer for Linux, similar to
            : top(1).

Available Packages
Name        : htop
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 1.0.3
Release     : 1.el6
Size        : 83 k
Repo        : epel
Summary     : Interactive process viewer
URL         : http://hisham.hm/htop/
License     : GPL+
Description : htop is an interactive text-mode process viewer for Linux, similar to
            : top(1).
  • here we can see information about htop utility.
Next tutorial we will go over some basic yum commands.

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