yum-plugin-autoskip

A YUM plugin that disables non-reachable YUM repositories or modifies them using local config files.

Features

Autoskip changes repositories without modifying the YUM repo files:

• Skip repositories if their mirrorlist or baseurl is not reachable
  • Prevents PYCURL ERRORs on isolated networks
• Modify mirrorlist locations without changing .repo files
  • Redirect existing repositories to local mirrors so you don't have to create additional repo files and/or mess with the original ones
• Disable repositories if they exist based on wildcard
  • Block repos you don't want even if their repo files get overwritten again by YUM

Installation

If you don't install via the RPM, then copy autoskip.py to

/usr/lib/yum-plugins/autoskip.py

and add a config file /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/autoskip.conf:

[main]
enabled=1

Configuration

Redirect to local mirrors

If you want to redirect YUM to local mirrorlists, place those mirrorlists in /etc/yum/mirrors/

Example: To redirect CentOS base (from CentOS-Base.repo) to a local mirror, create /etc/yum/mirrors/base:

http://repo.example.net/yum/centos/$release/os/$basearch

(assuming this is where the server will have it's YUM mirror for CentOS)

Note that this is just a mirrorlist file so you may add additional urls for failback if the first one would be unavailable.

Disable repos by name or wildcard

To disable repos, create /etc/yum/mirrors/disabled containing the repo ids (wildcards * and ? are accepted). For example /etc/yum/mirrors/disabled:

ol7_UEKR5

Will disable the Oracle UEK kernel repo for Oracle Linux 7, UEK release 5. /etc/yum/mirrors/disabled:

ol?_UEKR*

will disable all UEK kernel repos (as long as their repoid matches the pattern).

Description

Autoskip will look for a file named /etc/yum/mirrors/disabled and disable all repositories defined in that file.

Then for each enabled repo, it will look for a file named /etc/yum/mirrors/ and if exists, uses this as mirrorlist instead of the one defined in the .repo file.

Finally, for http/https urls, it will issue a http request to the mirrorlist url (or, if not defined, baseurl) and disable the repo if it cannot reach the url.

Rationale

When installing Linux on isolated networks, YUM tends to spit out a lot of PYCURL ERRORs and sometimes give up (especially when using the fastestmirror plugin).

Autoskip allows one to define a local YUM mirror without modifying .repo files such as CentOS-Base.repo - which makes automated installs and updates on such networks a lot easier.

Even on systems that have proper http/https access, defining a local YUM mirror may speed up updates and package installs but configuring this by modifying .repo files through awk/sed can be a pain. With Autoskip you just add a mirrorlist file with the name of the repo.

Known issues

• Cannot re-enable a repo with --enablerepo= once disabled.
• FTP based repos currently not tested for reachability so they may still cause failures
• Must run before the fastestmirror plugin (if enabled) to work properly