Redhat

June 29, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

RHEL / CentOS / Fedora / Rocky Linux

Redhat is one of the original Linux distributions.

Unfortunately they discontinued their free Redhat distribution replacing it with a commercially licensed Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and a less stable desktop-focused Fedora Linux in the mid 2000s.

Community volunteers reacted by creating CentOS from RHEL source rpms to maintain a clone of stable redhat enterprise linux for servers. Redhat supported this for years but eventually killed it in the leading to another clone Rocky Linux.

Redhat then decided to even stop providing their source rpms to make it harder to maintain any open source redhat server class distribution. Fedora is less stable and changes more frequently.

Nobody who runs serious servers wants to beta test Redhat for free.

This has led to the other major original distribution Debian (and its derivative Ubuntu) becoming the standard Linux distributions and sadly relegating Redhat based distos to legacy status.

Do not use Redhat based distros for new work today unless you have no other choice.

Redhat Package Management - Rpm to Yum to Dnf

rpm installs local rpm package files and maintains a local database of installed packages.

yum pulls rpms from internet repositories and installs them locally while resolving the dependencies and pulling the other required packages. Redhat used to be a nightmare in the early 2000s before Redhat adopted this package manager from Yellow Dog Linux (Yum stood for Yellow dog Update Manager). Yum is written in Python, which is a maintenance nightmare since the 2000s. Trying to upgrade the system Python would break the world leading to awkward workarounds or virtualenvs.

dnf - a drop in yum replacement written in C/C++, often symlinked to yum with mostly the same arguments for the basics but differing outputs and options have happened over time.

You can generally use yum and dnf commands interchangeably for the most part.

yum of course works on both older and newer systems so we'll keep using this for now.

Yum & Rpm

Find which package would install the htpasswd command:

yum provides '*/bin/htpasswd'

yum provides \*/bin/java

output:

java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless
java-11-openjdk-headless

Yum Proxy Configuration

Set yum proxy in /etc/yum.conf.

wget - set proxy in /etc/wgetrc.

Proxy configuration for all repos in /etc/yum.conf:

proxy=http://server:3128
proxy_username=hari
proxy_password=myPass
disable proxying for specific internal repos
proxy=_none_
or for a single user/session yum can pick up:
export http_proxy="http://user:pass@server:3128"

shell yum install -y yum-utils 

repoquery -f */file

inspired by http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/YumAndRPM

To see an rpm's files and header:

less "$file.rpm"

Look for rpm groups in /usr/share/doc/rpm-4.4.2.3/GROUPS

Repos files in /etc/yum/repos.d/ have to end in .repo.

Determine when package was installed or when the os itself was installed by looking at first rpm installation date:

rpm -qa --last

keychecker # from epel, lists the originating repos of all installed rpms from their gpg signature, or packages specified on the cli

Show all repos + enabled/disabled status + no of packages in repo:

yum repolist all

Show just enabled or disabled:

yum repolist # [enabled|disabled]

Find all non CentOS packages:

rpm -qa --qf '%{NAME} %{VENDOR}\n' | grep -v CentOS

Reset file permissions on the files for a given package, in case you've messed things up:

rpm --setperms "$package"

rpm --setugids "$package"

Look at the changelog for a package to see if it's had patches applied:

rpm -q --changelog "$package" | less

See doc files for a package:

rpm -qd "$package"

See the doc files for the package that installed a file:

rpm -qfd /path/to/file

Find out what packages you have from a vendor by querying from the rpm fields works for most fields shown by rpm -qi:

rpm -qa release='*rf*'

rpm -qa vendor="Dag*"

rpm -qa packager="Dag*"

Extract just one file for from an rpm:

First list the files in the package to find out what you want:

rpm -qlp "$package"

This is the better way of seeing the filename that you must pass to cpio next for an exact match to extract just that one file:

rpm2cpio "$package" | cpio -t

Then extract just the file you want:

rpm2cpio "$package" | cpio -ivd filename

Here you can see it only extracted cpan2rpm when given ./usr as this was seen by cpio -t

rpm2cpio cpan2rpm-2.026-12.0.el5.noarch.rpm | cpio -ivd ./usr/bin/cpan2rpm

results in ./usr/bin being created with cpan2rpm in it, then just copy elsewhere

List RPM Install Dates:

rpm -qa --last

yum-config-manager --disable <repoid>

or

yum-config-manager --save --setopt=<repoid>.skip_if_unavailable=true

List all available rpms from a particular repo:

yum --disablerepo "*" --enablerepo "internal" list available

List package, both installed and available:

yum list "$package"

Download rpm and all the dependencies that aren't currently installed for putting in to your own stable repo

yumdownloader --resolve "$package"

Use yum to install a local package, automatically checking/satisfying dependencies:

yum --nogpgcheck localinstall packagename.arch.rpm

Select priority, name from repos order by priority desc:

cat /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo |
sed -n -e '/^\[/h; /priority *=/{ G; s/\n/ /; s/ity=/ity = /; p }' |
sort -k3n

my slightly better but much more complicated version

cat /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo |
sed -n -e '/^\[/h; /priority *=/{ H; g; s/ *\n/ / ; s/ity=/ity = /; p }' |
xargs -l1 printf "%-15s %s %s %s\n" |
sort -k4n

Anything not listed will default to priority 99.

This rather complicated line will output the complete thing, but it's turning in to a shell script by this point:

cat /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo |
grep -e "^\[" \
     -e "priority *=" |
     tr '\n' ' ' |
     ed 's/ \[/\n[/g;' |
    while read -r line; do
       grep -q "priority" <<< "$line" || line+=" priority=99"
       echo "$line"
    done |
    sed 's/ity=/ity = /' |
    xargs -l1 printf "%-25s %s %s %s\n" |
    sort -k4n

yum search freeradius

yum list freeradius*

yum info freeradius*

yum whatprovides etc/httpd

yum grouplist hidden

yum groupinstall

yum update --exclude="$package"

Protect base repo packages

Use to protect base repo packages from being updated from other repos:

Packages:

  • yum-protectbase in RHEL5
  • yum-plugin-protectbase in RHEL6

Config:

  • /etc/yum.repos.d/base.repo: protect=1 under stanza
  • /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/rhnplugin.conf: protect = yes under stanza

Build rpms

rpmbuild --rebuild foo.src.rpm

rpmbuild -D "packager Hari Sekhon <hari.sekhon@gmail.com>" foo.spec

cd
mkdir -p redhat/{SRPMS,RPMS,SPECS,BUILD,SOURCES}
echo "%_topdir /home/hari/redhat" >> .rpmmacros
echo "%packager Hari Sekhon <hari.sekhon@gmail.com>" >> .rpmmacros
then rpmbuild

When packaging for custom version of perl, put this in ~/.rpmmacros:

%packager   Hari Sekhon
%__perl     /usr/local/bin/perl

cpan2rpm --no-sign --packager "Hari Sekhon <hari.sekhon@gmail.com>" MIME::Lite

Download all RPMs from an external repo, install yum-utils for reposync, createrepo and have a web server serve out this directory:

yum install yum-utils createrepo

reposync -r <repo_name>

createrepo .

RHEL 8 modules

Collections of packages for an application stream version.

yum module list

yum module list installed

Which module provides this rpm:

yum module provides $rpm

yum module info module

List rpms installed my module:

yum module info --profile module:stream

Display status of module:

yum module list "$module"

Enable without installing rpms:

yum module enable "$module:$stream"

Install specific stream version:

yum module install "$module:$stream/$profile"

Disable + remove all rpms from module stream:

yum module remove module &&
yum module disable module

RHSCL - Redhat Software Collections

Gives developers newer Python/Perl/MySQL bundles.

https://developers.redhat.com/products/red-hat-software-collections/overview

Pulp

https://pulpproject.org/

Repository management

Docker

Since CentOS is dead, you'll need to run either the fast moving Fedora or a RHEL clone like Rocky Linux or Alma Linux or similar.

Testing Upgrades in Docker with Fedora Linux

Run an older Fedora version:

docker run -it --rm fedora:39 bash

You do not need to modify the /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo.

Check what updates are available:

dnf check-update

Proceed to test whatever upgrade commands you want.

Testing Upgrades in Docker with Rocky Linux

Run an older Rocky Linux version such as 8:

docker run -it --rm rockylinux:8 bash

dnf check-update

Proceed to test whatever upgrade commands you want.

Kickstart - Automated Installations

All Redhat derived systems can be automatically installed using a Kickstart configuration file which can be bundled into an installation medium such as a DVD iso or served by a web server on the local network.

This is called by adding the following kernel arguments in the installation grub bootloader:

inst.ks=http://192.168.1.2:8080/kickstart.cfg

(if booting hangs, try adding some of these kernel arguments: nolapic, pci=routeirq, pci=noacpi, noapic)

If you just want to start a quick webserver from your local directory, you can do this which starts a local webserver on port 8080:

warning this will share out your entire $PWD local directory contents without authentication so copy to an empty /tmp directory and share that so nothing else is exposed:

mkdir -p -v /tmp/serve-kickstart &&

cd /tmp/serve-kickstart &&

wget -nc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HariSekhon/Templates/master/anaconda-ks.cfg &&

python -m SimpleHTTPServer ||

python -m http.server

Kickstart Template

When installing a system by hand, the anaconda installer generates a template automatically with the settings you used at /root/anaconda-ks.cfg. You can use this as a starting point,

Or you can use this template with some additional tips:

HariSekhon/Templates - anaconda-ks.cfg

Readme Card

or the real kickstart config used in the Packer repo below.

HashiCorp Packer + Kickstart Config

HariSekhon/Packer-templates

Packer builds fully automated Virtual Machine golden templates from which to clone virtual machines by booting the Redhat Anaconda installer medium with a Kickstart config.

Real-world Kickstart config used by Packer build:

HariSekhon/Packer-templates - installers/anaconda-ks.cfg

HariSekhon/Packer-templates - fedora-x86_64.vbox.pkr.hcl

HariSekhon/Packer-templates - rocky-x86_64.vbox.pkr.hcl

Readme Card

Memes

Imported Package Tariffs

Imported Package Tariffs

Ported from private Knowledge Base page 2010+ - should have been from early to mid 2000s but young guys don't document enough