Mark Alford's yum summary (Fedora Core 3)

Last modified 2 Jan 2005

I use yum to keep my system updated. Here is my step-by-step procedure:

1. Import the Red Hat Network key so that gpg checks will work:

   > rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
   

2. Nominate repositories by including them in the "baseurl" line in the following files in /etc/yum.repos.d. I looked at the Fedora mirror list and chose the closest repositories to me.

   /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo:
   ----
   [base]
   name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
   baseurl=http://mirror.eas.muohio.edu/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/,http://fedora.server4you.net/fedora/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/
   # mirrorlist=http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors/fedora-core-$releasever
   enabled=1
   gpgcheck=1
   ----
   
   /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo:
   ----
   [updates-released]
   name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates
   baseurl=http://mirror.eas.muohio.edu/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/,http://fedora.server4you.net/fedora/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
   # mirrorlist=http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors/updates-released-fc$releasever
   enabled=1
   gpgcheck=1
   ----
   

3. To have access to the freshRPMs repository of useful extra packages, go to that site and download and install freshrpms-release-1-1.fc.fr.rpm. Then uncomment the url in /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.repo:

   ----
   [freshrpms]
   name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Freshrpms
   baseurl=http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/$releasever/$basearch/freshrpms/
   mirrorlist=http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/$releasever/mirrors-freshrpms
   enabled=1
   gpgcheck=1
   ----
   

   Now you can access that repository with yum. Eg to get the xine program for viewing movies and DVDs, you type

   > yum install xine
   

   and it follows all the dependencies and installs xine and everything it needs to function.
4. If your system is up all the time, you can tell it to run yum every night:

   > chkconfig yum on
   

5. A quick summary of useful yum commands:

   yum update    # brings your system up to date
   yum --exclude 'openoffice*' update  # exclude big unnecessary stuff
   yum clean packages   # delete already installed package files
   

Copyright © Mark Alford (2005)

Mark Alford's home page