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Chapter 8. Yum
Yum is the Red Hat package manager that is able to query for information about available packages, fetch packages from repositories, install and uninstall them, and update an entire system to the latest available version. Yum performs automatic dependency resolution on packages you are updating, installing, or removing, and thus is able to automatically determine, fetch, and install all available dependent packages.
Yum can be configured with new, additional repositories, or package sources, and also provides many plug-ins which enhance and extend its capabilities. Yum is able to perform many of the same tasks that RPM can; additionally, many of the command-line options are similar. Yum enables easy and simple package management on a single machine or on groups of them.
The following sections assume your system was registered with Red Hat Subscription Management during installation as described in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Installation Guide. If your system is not subscribed, see Chapter 6, Registering the System and Managing Subscriptions.
Important
Yum provides secure package management by enabling GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard; also known as GnuPG) signature verification on GPG-signed packages to be turned on for all package repositories (i.e. package sources), or for individual repositories. When signature verification is enabled, Yum will refuse to install any packages not GPG-signed with the correct key for that repository. This means that you can trust that the RPM packages you download and install on your system are from a trusted source, such as Red Hat, and were not modified during transfer. See Section 8.4, “Configuring Yum and Yum Repositories” for details on enabling signature-checking with Yum, or Section B.3, “Checking a Package's Signature” for information on working with and verifying GPG-signed RPM packages in general.
Yum also enables you to easily set up your own repositories of RPM packages for download and installation on other machines.
Learning Yum is a worthwhile investment because it is often the fastest way to perform system administration tasks, and it provides capabilities beyond those provided by the PackageKit graphical package management tools. See Chapter 9, PackageKit for details on using PackageKit.
Note
You must have superuser privileges in order to use
yum
to install, update or remove packages on your system. All examples in this chapter assume that you have already obtained superuser privileges by using either the su
or sudo
command.
8.1. Checking For and Updating Packages
8.1.1. Checking For Updates
To see which installed packages on your system have updates available, use the following command:
yum
check-update
For example:
~]# yum check-update
Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, subscription-manager
Updating Red Hat repositories.
INFO:rhsm-app.repolib:repos updated: 0
PackageKit.x86_64 0.5.8-2.el6 rhel
PackageKit-glib.x86_64 0.5.8-2.el6 rhel
PackageKit-yum.x86_64 0.5.8-2.el6 rhel
PackageKit-yum-plugin.x86_64 0.5.8-2.el6 rhel
glibc.x86_64 2.11.90-20.el6 rhel
glibc-common.x86_64 2.10.90-22 rhel
kernel.x86_64 2.6.31-14.el6 rhel
kernel-firmware.noarch 2.6.31-14.el6 rhel
rpm.x86_64 4.7.1-5.el6 rhel
rpm-libs.x86_64 4.7.1-5.el6 rhel
rpm-python.x86_64 4.7.1-5.el6 rhel
udev.x86_64 147-2.15.el6 rhel
yum.noarch 3.2.24-4.el6 rhel
The packages in the above output are listed as having updates available. The first package in the list is PackageKit, the graphical package manager. The line in the example output tells us:
PackageKit
— the name of the packagex86_64
— the CPU architecture the package was built for0.5.8
— the version of the updated package to be installedrhel
— the repository in which the updated package is located
The output also shows us that we can update the kernel (the kernel package), Yum and RPM themselves (the yum and rpm packages), as well as their dependencies (such as the kernel-firmware, rpm-libs, and rpm-python packages), all using
yum
.
8.1.2. Updating Packages
You can choose to update a single package, multiple packages, or all packages at once. If any dependencies of the package (or packages) you update have updates available themselves, then they are updated too.
Updating a Single Package
To update a single package, run the following command as
root
:
yum
update
package_name
For example, to update the udev package, type:
~]# yum update udev
Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, subscription-manager
Updating Red Hat repositories.
INFO:rhsm-app.repolib:repos updated: 0
Setting up Update Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package udev.x86_64 0:147-2.15.el6 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Dependencies Resolved
===========================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===========================================================================
Updating:
udev x86_64 147-2.15.el6 rhel 337 k
Transaction Summary
===========================================================================
Install 0 Package(s)
Upgrade 1 Package(s)
Total download size: 337 k
Is this ok [y/N]:
This output contains several items of interest:
Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, subscription-manager
—yum
always informs you which Yum plug-ins are installed and enabled. See Section 8.5, “Yum Plug-ins” for general information on Yum plug-ins, or to Section 8.5.3, “Plug-in Descriptions” for descriptions of specific plug-ins.udev.x86_64
— you can download and install new udev package.yum
presents the update information and then prompts you as to whether you want it to perform the update;yum
runs interactively by default. If you already know which transactions theyum
command plans to perform, you can use the-y
option to automatically answeryes
to any questions thatyum
asks (in which case it runs non-interactively). However, you should always examine which changesyum
plans to make to the system so that you can easily troubleshoot any problems that might arise.If a transaction does go awry, you can view Yum's transaction history by using theyum history
command as described in Section 8.3, “Working with Transaction History”.
Important
yum
always installs a new kernel in the same sense that RPM installs a new kernel when you use the command rpm -i kernel
. Therefore, you do not need to worry about the distinction between installing and upgrading a kernel package when you use yum
: it will do the right thing, regardless of whether you are using the yum update
or yum install
command.
When using RPM, on the other hand, it is important to use the
rpm -i kernel
command (which installs a new kernel) instead of rpm -u kernel
(which replaces the current kernel). See Section B.2.2, “Installing and Upgrading” for more information on installing/upgrading kernels with RPM.
Updating All Packages and Their Dependencies
To update all packages and their dependencies, enter
yum update
(without any arguments):
yum update
Updating Security-Related Packages
Discovering which packages have security updates available and then updating those packages quickly and easily is important. Yum provides the plug-in for this purpose. The security plug-in extends the
yum
command with a set of highly-useful security-centric commands, subcommands and options. See Section 8.5.3, “Plug-in Descriptions” for specific information.
Updating Packages Automatically
It is also possible to set up periodical automatic updates for your packages. For this purpose, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 uses the yum-cron package. It provides a Yum interface for the
cron
daemon and downloads metadata from your package repositories. With the yum-cron service enabled, the user can schedule an automated daily Yum update as a cron job.
Note
The yum-cron package is provided by the Optional subscription channel. See Section 8.4.8, “Adding the Optional and Supplementary Repositories” for more information on Red Hat additional channels.
To install yum-cron issue the following command:
~]# yum install yum-cron
By default, the yum-cron service is disabled and needs to be activated and started manually:
~]# chkconfig yum-cron on
~]# service yum-cron start
To verify the status of the service, run the following command:
~]# service yum-cron status
The script included in the yum-cron package can be configured to change the extent and frequency of the updates, as well as to send notifications to e-mail. To customize yum-cron, edit the
/etc/sysconfig/yum-cron
file.
Additional details and instructions for
yum-cron
can be found in the comments within /etc/sysconfig/yum-cron
and at the yum-cron(8) manual page.
8.1.3. Preserving Configuration File Changes
You will inevitably make changes to the configuration files installed by packages as you use your Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. RPM, which Yum uses to perform changes to the system, provides a mechanism for ensuring their integrity. See Section B.2.2, “Installing and Upgrading” for details on how to manage changes to configuration files across package upgrades.
8.1.4. Upgrading the System Off-line with ISO and Yum
For systems that are disconnected from the Internet or Red Hat Network, using the
yum update
command with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation ISO image is an easy and quick way to upgrade systems to the latest minor version. The following steps illustrate the upgrading process:
- Create a target directory to mount your ISO image. This directory is not automatically created when mounting, so create it before proceeding to the next step. As
root
, type:mkdir
mount_dirReplace mount_dir with a path to the mount directory. Typically, users create it as a subdirectory in the/media
directory. - Mount the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 installation ISO image to the previously created target directory. As
root
, type:mount
-o
loop
iso_name mount_dirReplace iso_name with a path to your ISO image and mount_dir with a path to the target directory. Here, the-o
loop
option is required to mount the file as a block device. - Copy the
media.repo
file from the mount directory to the/etc/yum.repos.d/
directory. Note that configuration files in this directory must have the .repo extension to function properly.cp
mount_dir/media.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/new.repo
This creates a configuration file for the yum repository. Replace new.repo with the filename, for example rhel6.repo. - Edit the new configuration file so that it points to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation ISO. Add the following line into the
/etc/yum.repos.d/new.repo
file:baseurl=file:///mount_dir
Replace mount_dir with a path to the mount point. - Update all yum repositories including
/etc/yum.repos.d/new.repo
created in previous steps. Asroot
, type:yum
update
This upgrades your system to the version provided by the mounted ISO image. - After successful upgrade, you can unmount the ISO image. As
root
, type:umount
mount_dirwhere mount_dir is a path to your mount directory. Also, you can remove the mount directory created in the first step. Asroot
, type:rmdir
mount_dir - If you will not use the previously created configuration file for another installation or update, you can remove it. As
root
, type:rm
/etc/yum.repos.d/new.repo
Example 8.1. Upgrading from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 to 6.4
Imagine you need to upgrade your system without access to the Internet. To do so, you want to use an ISO image with the newer version of the system, called for instance
RHEL6.4-Server-20130130.0-x86_64-DVD1.iso
. A target directory created for mounting is /media/rhel6/
. As root
, change into the directory with your ISO image and type:
~]#mount
-o
loop
RHEL6.4-Server-20130130.0-x86_64-DVD1.iso
/media/rhel6/
Then set up a yum repository for your image by copying the
media.repo
file from the mount directory:
~]#cp
/media/rhel6/media.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/rhel6.repo
To make yum recognize the mount point as a repository, add the following line into the
/etc/yum.repos.d/rhel6.repo
copied in the previous step:
baseurl=file:///media/rhel6/
Now, updating the yum repository will upgrade your system to a version provided by
RHEL6.4-Server-20130130.0-x86_64-DVD1.iso
. As root
, execute:
~]#yum
update
When your system is successfully upgraded, you can unmount the image, remove the target directory and the configuration file:
~]#umount
/media/rhel6/
~]#rmdir
/media/rhel6/
~]#rm
/etc/yum.repos.d/rhel6.repo