Home / server / Questions / 26033
Accepted
Bob Cross
Asked: 2009-06-16 09:31:28 +0800 CST

How do I install yum on Redhat Enterprise 4?

  • 772

For historical reasons, one of the machines that I manage has a Redhat Enterprise 4 boot disk (among others). Every now and then, we have to boot into RHEL4 to bring up some of the legacy software that we support and connect to. Since it's a fringe system, the Redhat support has long since lapsed and I can't convince myself that it would be worth paying just to get RPMs that I can go and get for myself.

That said, the default RHEL tools are heavily biased against letting you do exactly that. I would like to install yum and use that as my package discovery and installation.

So, is there an installation guide to integrating yum with an older RHEL 4 system?

linux yum rhel4

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    up2date has support for using yum repositories. Probably better to use that, than to install additional software you don't necessarily need.

    Edit /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources

    Add a line like:

    yum EPEL http://rhn.sonoma.edu/pub/mirrors/epel/4/$ARCH

    That's a literal "yum", the repository name you'd like up2date to see it as, then the URL, which has some very limited support for variables, such as $ARCH.

    You can also do apt and straight directories; there's examples in the file.

    If you want to disable the RHN stuff, just comment out the "up2date default" line from the same file.

    • 2

  2. Not too long ago I moved a RHEL 4 system to CentOS for similar reasons. It was a pretty simple process and has worked very well so far. I used these instructions:

    http://fixlinux.com/2006/04/11/migrate-rhel-to-centos/

    • 1

  3. This repository is run by Redhat.

    • 1

  4. To install yum on RHEL4, use the instructions here. They describe obtaining all yum's dependencies from http://fr2.rpmfind.net/, and configures the system to use that as a yum repository. Check the individual packages for newer versions, but otherwise it worked just fine.

    • 1

  5. Just go on the internet and find a compatible yum rpm. Then do sudo rpm -ivh [RPM name]. That should do the basic installation. After that you have to find some repositories with the RPMS you want to be able to install. I strongly suggest DAG, although I don't know if they continue to maintain libraries for older OSes. Most repositories will have their own rpms for installing the necessary configs and keys, and if they don't they will have step by step instructions for getting set up.

    • 0

  6. Look into RPMforge. You can get a yum from there.

    • 0