Search My Blog

Monday, July 12, 2010

DAG: mrepo: Yum/Apt repository mirroring (fka yam)

mrepo: Yum/Apt repository mirroring (fka yam)
Yam has been renamed to mrepo.
mrepo builds a local APT/Yum RPM repository from local ISO files, downloaded updates, and extra packages from 3rd party repositories. It takes care of setting up the ISO files, downloading the RPMs, configuring HTTP access and providing PXE/TFTP resources for remote network installations.
It was primarily intended for doing remote network installations of various distributions from a laptop without the need for CD media or floppies, but is equally suitable for an organisation's centralized update server.

Doing a remote installation only requires a configured DHCP-server, the TFTP service and a Webserver configured with mrepo. Then boot your system using a PXE-enabled network card.

For updating your local systems, configure either Smart, Apt, Yum or up2date and point them to your local mrepo server.

  • Easy Yum-alike configuration
  • Supports mirroring using FISH, FTP, HTTP, RSYNC, SFTP, YOU and RHN
  • Supports Smart, Apt, Yum and up2date (as well as synaptic, yumgui and other derivatives)
  • Can download and distribute updates from RHN (Red Hat Network) channels
  • Can download and distribute updates from YOU (YaST Online Update) channels
  • Can work directly from ISO images (so you don't need extra diskspace to store ISOs or copy RPMs)
  • Supports Red Hat, Fedora Core, Red Hat Enterprise (TaoLinux, CentOS) and Yellow Dog Linux out of the box
  • Will probably work with other RPM based distributions (feedback needed, please mail me)
  • Allows for remote network installation (using a PXE-enabled NIC on target systems)
  • Support for 3rd party repositories and vendor packages
  • Allows to maintain your own customized (corporate) repository
  • Allow for chaining mrepo servers in large organisations with remote sites
  • Can hardlink duplicate packages (to save precious diskspace)
You can download packages of mrepo from: http://dag.wieers.com/packages/mrepo/

The 0.8.6 release is here: http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/mrepo/mrepo-0.8.6.tar.bz2

There's a mailinglist about mrepo and some other related tools at: http://lists.rpmforge.net/mailman/listinfo/tools You can have access to the latest release via subversion from: or see the latest commits via viewvc: I have made some sample configuration files available, including my own config-file I'm using right now. You can find these in subversion (but also in the package documentation directory). Subversion also holds the current documentation and example config-files, so please look there for more information. If you have improvements, found a bug or have a great idea, please mail me so we can look at how to integrate it. And there are external sites explaining on how to use mrepo as well:
Go there...
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/mrepo/

Don

No comments: