YUM stands for Yellowdog Updater Modified, is an open source command line package management for RPM-based distributions of Linux like RedHat, CentOS, Fedora etc. YUM allows system administrators to easily Install, Update, Search or Uninstall software packages on a system.
System admnistrators can configure YUM to use third party repositories to install packages automatically by resolving their dependency issues. Here we would see those 15 most frequently used YUM commands with examples.
1. How to Install a package using YUM
If you are a newbie to Linux administration and if would have installed any software using rpm installation, then you would know the pain of installing all dependencies before you could install the original one. But Linux gives you that power which other OS wouldn’t give ie., YUM which will automatically find and install all required dependencies for the software. To install a package, do ‘yum install packagename’. Ex: yum install
[root@catest ~]# yum install firefox
You would have noticed during the above command execution, that it would prompt you to accept or decline Is this ok [y/N]: . If you want YUM to install automatically without prompting, use -y option as shown below :
[root@catest ~]# yum -y install firefox
Sometimes you may need to install all corresponding developmental packages/libraries/test packages etc., along with the main package. In that case you can use * sign for installing all the packages which starts with mysql instead of specifying each package for installation.
[root@catest ~]# yum -y install mysql*
This would install packages like mysql-bench, mysql-connector-odbc, mysql-devel, mysql-server, mysql-test etc.,
2. How to get a package information using YUM
Sometimes you would like to know information about a package already installed on your system before any further upgradation ! Just follow the below command to know more information of a package.
[root@catest ~]# yum info firefox
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, security
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Installed Packages
Name : firefox
Arch : i386
Version : 17.0.8
Release : 1.el5.centos
Size : 29 M
Repo : installed
Summary : Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
URL : http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
License : MPLv1.1 or GPLv2+ or LGPLv2+
Description: Mozilla Firefox is an open-source web browser, designed for standards
: compliance, performance and portability.
Name : firefox
Arch : x86_64
Version : 17.0.8
Release : 1.el5.centos
Size : 29 M
Repo : installed
Summary : Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
URL : http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
License : MPLv1.1 or GPLv2+ or LGPLv2+
Description: Mozilla Firefox is an open-source web browser, designed for standards
: compliance, performance and portability.3. How to upgrade/update a software using YUM
You need to keep updating your firefox as and when firefox releases new version. To do this just run the following command and it will automatically update your firefox.
[root@catest ~]# yum update mysql
4. How to remove/Uninstall a software package using YUM
Uninstallation of packages along with all its dependencies, use ‘yum remove package’ as shown below.
[root@catest ~]# yum remove mysql
5. How to search for a software package using YUM
When an exact package name to be installed is not known, then use ‘yum search keyword’. This will search all the packages which matches with the “keyword” and display it.
[root@catest ~]# yum search firefox Wed Nov 06>$yum search firefox Loaded plugins: security ============= Matched: firefox ================== firefox.i386 : Mozilla Firefox Web browser firefox.x86_64 : Mozilla Firefox Web browser rubygem-less.noarch : Dynamic stylesheet support for Ruby xulrunner.i386 : XUL Runtime for Gecko Applications xulrunner.x86_64 : XUL Runtime for Gecko Applications Wed Nov 06>$
6. How to list all the packages available in the YUM database
The following command will list all of the packages available in the YUM database.
[root@catest ~]# yum list | less
7. How to list all the installed packages on your system.
The following command will list all the installed packages on your system.
[root@catest ~]# yum list installed | less
8. How to find out which are the packages available for upgradation using YUM.
If you want to find out whether specific package is up-to-date you can use point 2. But as a whole system if you would like to find out which are all the packages ready for upgradation, run the below command :
[root@catest ~]# yum list updates | less
9. How to find a file belonging to which package using YUM.
If you would like to know the file /etc/sysconfig/nfs belongs to which packages, then just run the below command and see the output as it belongs to nfs-utils-1.0.9-70.el5.x86_64.
[root@catest ~]# yum provides /etc/sysconfig/nfs
Loaded plugins: security
1:nfs-utils-1.0.9-70.el5.x86_64 : NFS utilities and supporting clients and
: daemons for the kernel NFS server.
Repo : centos
Matched from:
Filename : /etc/sysconfig/nfs
1:nfs-utils-1.0.9-44.el5.x86_64 : NFS utilities and supporting clients and
: daemons for the kernel NFS server.
Repo : installed
Matched from:
Other : Provides-match: /etc/sysconfig/nfs10. How to cleanup YUM cache
When you install any package using YUM, it downloads the packages(RPM files) to your local YUM cache directory located at /var/cache/yum/. Particularly the packages RPM that have been downloaded can occupy much space and is of no reason to leave it when its job is done. In order to make the corresponding cleaning, the following command can be executed to clean up all at once :
[root@catest ~]# yum clean all
11. Search the list with specific package name
To search for package names only, use yum list. This differs from normal search which is much faster, as it will search package names only, while yum search will search all the package info, including package description.
[root@catest ~]# yum list firefox Loaded plugins: security Installed Packages firefox.i386 3.0.18-1.el5_4 installed firefox.x86_64 3.0.18-1.el5_4 installed Available Packages firefox.i386 17.0.8-1.el5.centos centos firefox.x86_64 17.0.8-1.el5.centos centos Wed Nov 06>
12. Know your YUM repositories configured
To know the repositories that are configured in your system, do ‘yum repolist’ as shown below.
[root@catest ~]# yum repolist Loaded plugins: security repo id repo name status centos CentOS 5Server - x86_64 enabled: 3662 rpmforge RHEL 5Server - RPMforge.net - dag enabled: 11318 repolist: 14980 Wed Nov 06>$
To display all the repositories (ie., configured and not configured on your server) run the below command:
[root@catest ~]# yum repolist all Loaded plugins: security repo id repo name status centos CentOS 5Server - x86_64 enabled: 3662 rhel-debuginfo Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Server - x86_64 - D disabled rhel-debuginfo-beta Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Server Beta - x86_6 disabled rpmforge RHEL 5Server - RPMforge.net - dag enabled: 11318 rpmforge-extras RHEL 5Server - RPMforge.net - extras disabled rpmforge-testing RHEL 5Server - RPMforge.net - testing disabled repolist: 14980 Wed Nov 06>$
13. How to install a package from a non configured repository using yum –enablerepo
By default yum installs only from the enabled repositories. For some reason if you like to install a package from a disabled repositories, use –enablerepo option in the ‘yum install’ as shown below.
[root@catest ~]#yum --enablerepo=rhel-debuginfo install vim-X11.x86_64
14. To list recent updated/added packages to the repository database using YUM
To get a list of packages updated/added to any of your repositories recently:
[root@catest ~]# yum list recent
15. YUM interactive shell
You can run multiple commands on the interactive shell provided by YUM as shown below :
Wed Nov 06>$yum shell Loaded plugins: security Setting up Yum Shell > info mysql
I hope this will help you understand how to use yum more effeciently.
