A Reference on Yum, Yellowdog Updater, Modified

Recently, I had to mess with yum a lot. It is a powerful command line package management tool for RPM packages, and if you want to do automatic mass installations and updates, as in my case, GUI is not an option. I have collected the commands I have used among others, and created a reference.

All these commands have been tested on Scientific Linux 6.0 x86_64.
The version of yum I have used is 3.2.27.

# A reference to Yum, Yellowdog Updater, Modified # http://caglartoklu.blogspot.com # Yum is a command line package manager for # RPM-compatible Linux operating systems. Note that these commands requires root privileges. # _____ Updates # Check for availability package updates. yum check-update # Update all installed packages. yum update # Update a specific package. yum update package_name # Example: yum update mc # _____ Searching and finding about what to install # List the depencies of a package. yum deplist package_name # Example: yum deplist emacs # Search a string in the metadata of packages. # This metadata includes: name, summary, # description, url. yum search ri # Let's say you want the command 'ri' but # do not know which package is providing it. Type: yum provides ri # and you will see that 'ruby-ri-1.8.7.299....' # package os providing it. # Information about a package. # Note that the package does not have to be # installed on your system, it will display # the information anyway. yum info package_name # Example: yum info mc # Install a package or packages. yum install package_name yum install package_name1 package_name2 # Example: yum install mc # List the packages. yum list all yum list available yum list updates yum list installed yum list extra yum list obsoletes yum list recent # _____ Installing and removing packages # Remove a package or packages from your system. yum remove package_name yum remove package_name1 package_name2 # erase command can also be used. yum erase package_name yum erase package_name1 package_name2 # Install a package or packages. yum install package_name1 package_name2 # Example: yum install mc emacs # You can also install a package for a specific # architecture like this: yum install package_name.architecture # See 'Specifying package names' in this document. # Architecture can be x86_64 or i386. # Example: yum install mc.x86_64 # Install a local RPM. yum localinstall package_name # Update the distro using the RPMs saved locally. # cd to the directory you saved your rpms, and type: yum localupdate *.rpm # _____ Downloading packages # Download a package (current directory by default) yumdownloader package_name # If you do not have the yumdownloader, # install yum-utils using: yum install yum-utils # _____ Groups # See the list of groups installed: yum grouplist # This command will first list the installed groups, # then the available ones. # After seeing the list, see the information about. # about a group. If the group name includes a space, # enclose the group name with ' character. yum groupinfo group_name # Example: yum groupinfo 'FTP server' # Install packages of a group. Note that default # and mandatory ones will be installed. yum groupinstall group_name # Example: yum groupinstall 'FTP server' # Update packages of a group. yum groupupdate group_name # Example: yum groupupdate 'FTP server' # Remove all packages of a group. yum groupremove group_name # Example: yum groupremove 'FTP server' # _____ Specifying package names # A package can be referred to for install, update, # list, remove etc with any of the following: name name.arch name-ver name-ver-rel name-ver-rel.arch name-epoch:ver-rel.arch epoch:name-ver-rel.arch # _____ Shell # To start the interactive shell, type: yum shell # _____ References http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/yum8.html http://yum.baseurl.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowdog_Updater,_Modified

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