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Chapter 3. Configuring RHEL image builder repositories

You can add repositories or override the default base repositories.

You can use the following types of repositories in RHEL image builder:

Official repository overrides
Use these to download base system RPMs from a custom mirror, instead of the Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN). Official repositories overrides disables the default repositories, and your custom mirror must contain all the necessary packages.
Custom third-party repositories
Use these to include packages that are not available in the official RHEL repositories.

You can add additional custom repositories to your image during the image-building time by using the image-builder tool and the --extra-repo flag.

Prerequisites

  • You have the URL of the custom repository.

Procedure

  • Build the image, and add the extra repository to RHEL image builder: 

    $ image-builder build <image-type> \
--extra-repo=<file:///path/to/my/repo> \

    The repository content becomes available during the image building, and the dependency solver gets packages from the repository. For example, if the repository contains a libc or kernel with higher version, their content is selected over the default repositories.

You can add custom repositories and specify a distribution to your image by using the image-builder tool and with --extra-repo flag.

Prerequisites

  • You have the custom repository URL.

Procedure

  • Build the image, and add the extra repository source and the chosen distribution system to RHEL image builder: 

    $ image-builder build <image-type> \
--extra-repo <file:///path/to/my/repo> \
--distro rhel-10.0 \

Override the default base repositories during image build.

Prerequisites

  • You have a custom repository that is accessible from your host system.

Procedure

  1. Build the image, and add the extra repository to RHEL image builder: 

    $ image-builder build <image-type> \
--force-repo=<file:///path/to/my/repo> \
    Warning

    The RHEL image builder tool uses the repositories that you defined to solve all dependencies, which could cause issues for your system.

You can use Satellite’s content views (CV) as repositories to build images with RHEL image builder. Configure your Satellite-registered hosts to use Satellite repositories instead of the Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Find the repository URL from your currently configured Satellite repositories:

    The following output is an example: 

    https://satellite6.example.com/pulp/content/<your_org>/<your_env>/<your_cv>/content/dist/rhel10/10/x86_64/baseos/os

  2. Build the image, and add the Satellite repository to RHEL image builder: 

    $ image-builder build <image-type> \
--add-repo=<file:///path/to/satellite/repo> \

Configure RHEL image builder to use Satellite’s content views (CV) as repositories to build your custom images.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Content, locate Products, select your Product, and click the repository you want to use.
  2. Search for the secured URL (HTTPS) in the Published field and copy it.
  3. Use the URL that you copied as a base URL for the Red Hat image builder repository. See Adding custom third-party repositories to RHEL image builder.
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