How to Read public-yum-el5-repo

Yum is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for rpm systems. What it means that if your Linux based system is connected to the Internet, then you can install, upgrade or remove any software from the Yum servers. All the Linux distros come with the Yum client installed.

Oracle maintains a Yum server from where rpms can be downloaded and installed without any hassle and Yum itself resolves any dependencies.

If you have just installed OEL 5 Update 6, and you want to configure YUM, then first you would have to download and configure the YUM repository. In order to know which YUM repository to install for your version, check here.

E.g. I am using Oracle Linux 2.6.18-194.el5 i686, so I would go for the following:

Oracle Linux 5
# cd /etc/yum.repos.d

# wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo


In public-yum-el5.repo file, there are many entries for the corresponding Linux distros.

As mine is Oracle Linux with Update 6, so I would go for the entry:

[ol5_u6_base]

and would give value 1 to Enabled. Rest all entries are their enabled set to zero.

Then you can run commands like:

$ yum list available to list all the packages available for install

$ yum list installed to list all the installed packages at your system.

For more commands check here.

Also the first time when you run YUM it also installs the gpg key.