Tag Archives: Fedora

Linux HOWTO

AWStats Setup on CentOS

11 Comments

Introduction

AWStats is a great tool for gathering statistics about your website. It acquires everything it needs to know about your site strictly through your websites log files. AWStats is able to scan through these logs line by line and present them in a fantastic report. This report can really help you make strategic decisions going forward as well as spot any anomalies that might be taking place. The tool is smart enough to only scan newer log entries (from when it last ran) allowing you to run it again and again (as often as you want). Thus, once you set this tool up to run daily (or even hourly), you’ll have detailed statistics about your website you can call upon anytime.

AWStats collects information such as such as:AWStats Report

  • Who is visiting your site.
  • How many visitors you’re getting daily.
  • Where are they’re coming from (did a site link to you?)
  • Where is the visitor from (geographical location
  • … and on and on

    • The presentation of these collected statistics can be either via a website (HTML), XML and/or as a PDF file. The PDF is especially useful since it combines all of the multiple HTML pages (as presented) into one great big report with a table of contents and hyperlinks throughout it! The PDF is also really easy to navigate and pass along to others who might also be interested.

    Why Use AWStats over Google Analytics?

    Google Analytics Inaccuracy
    Google Analytics Inaccuracy
    The number one reason is because AWStats is much (,much) more accurate! AWStats also just works without ‘any’ changes to your website (literally – none at all). Google Analytics however requires you to add a small piece of JavaScript to every web page you want to track. Every time this tiny bit of JavaScript code executes, it passes the information along to Google. The problem is… if that little snippet of JavaScript doesn’t execute, then Google doesn’t track that user (and you’ll never know) because it just won’t get reported.

    It’s really easy to prevent this chunk of JavaScript from running too, you just have to have installed something like Ad-Blocker Plus, Disconnect and/or uBlock into your Web Browser (such as Firefox or Chrome). These plugins specifically block these tracking techniques and eliminate most (if not all) advertising the website might have too.

    It doesn’t mean that online analytic tools (like Google Analytics) are not good; no, not at all! But it’s just important to understand that they can’t (and truly aren’t) reporting everything that’s going on with your website and the traffic generated from it.

    Another point worth mentioning is that Google Analytics can not monitor and report statistics on traffic used by third party tools. Therefore you can’t use it to monitor any RESTful API services because the programs accessing it will never call these JavaScript snippets of code.

    It’s worth pointing out now that if you use AWStats, you’ll have the full picture! You’ll be able to easily identify any anomalies and detect certain forms of malicious intent! You’ll be able to monitor all of your internal (web based) services you may manage. From the public standpoint, you might be very surprised at how much more traffic your website is getting despite what online analytic tools will tell you!

    Let’s Get Started

    First you’ll want to install the proper packages. You should hook up to my repository and the EPEL repository as well! The EPEL repository hosts AWStats too, but mine is a newer version. We need the EPEL repository for it’s GeoIP packages since they get updated more often there:

    # CentOS 7 users can connect to EPEL this way:
rpm -Uhi https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

# Similarly, you can hook up to my repository at https://nuxref.com
# but here is a quick way of doing it (for CentOS/RedHat 7):
rpm -Uhi https://repo.nuxref.com/centos/7/en/x86_64/custom/nuxref-release-1.0.0-4.el7.nuxref.noarch.rpm

    You should be good to go now; the following installs AWStats and a few extra tools to get the best out of it:

    # install awstats
# install htmldoc too because it'll allow you to create a pdf
# install geoip-geolite for the ability to track the IPs
#        to countries
# install perl-Geo-IP to look up the IP Addresses
yum install awstats htmldoc geoip-geolite perl-Geo-IP

    AWStat In a Nutshell

    The steps below will require that you have set up the environment defined below. Obviously you’ll want to change these environment variables to suite your own needs:

    # First define our website as a variable.
# We will use this value to track and store in an
# organized structure.

# Those who host other websites for people can
# change this and virtually everything below will
# and re-run everything to get stats for that too!
WEBSITE=nuxref.com

# AWSTATS Variable Data
DATADIR=/var/lib/awstats/$WEBSITE

    Configuring AWStats: Step 1 of 3

    AWStats works from configuration files you create in /etc/awstats/. But it also needs a directory it can work within (we use /var/lib/awstats/). I’ve provided documentation around each line so you know what’s going on:

    # Make sure our environment variables are defined
# WEBSITE and DATADIR

# First we need to setup our DATADIR; this is where
# all our statistics and generated data will be placed
# into:
[ ! -d $DATADIR/static ] && \
    mkdir -p $DATADIR/static
ln -snf /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/icon \
   $DATADIR/static/icon
ln -snf /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin \
   $DATADIR/static/cgi-bin

# Create a configuration file using our website
# based on the awws.model.conf example file that
# ships with AWStats
sed -e "s|localhost\.localdomain|$WEBSITE|g" \
	/etc/awstats/awstats.model.conf > \
		/etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf

########################################
# Now update our new configuration
########################################
# Update the LogFile with our access.log file we'll
# reference. This path doesn't exist yet but
# we'll be creating it soon enough; leave this entry
# untouched (don't change it to your real log path!):
sed -i -e "s|^\(LogFile\)=.*$|\1=\"$DATADIR/access.log\"|g" \
   /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf

# Disable DNS (for speed mostly)
sed -i -e "s|^\(DNSLookup\)=.*$|\1=0|g" \
   /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf

# For PDF Generation we need to update the relative
# paths for the icons.
sed -i -e "s|^\(DirIcons\)=.*$|\1=\"icon\"|g" \
   /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf
sed -i -e "s|^\(DirCgi\)=.*$|\1=\"cgi-bin\"|g" \
   /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf

    Optionally Configuring GeoIP Updates

    The geolite data fetches us a great set of (meta) data we can reference when looking up IP Addresses (of people who visited our site) and determining what part of the world they came from. This information is fantastic when putting together statistics and web page traffic like AWStats does.

    First we want to configure AWStats to use the GEO IP Plugin:

    # Now configure our GEOIP Setup
sed -i -e '/^LoadPlugin=.*/d' /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf
cat << _EOF >> /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf
LoadPlugin="geoip GEOIP_STANDARD /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat"
LoadPlugin="geoip_city_maxmind GEOIP_STANDARD /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIPCity.dat"
_EOF

    Next we want to set up our GEO IP to update itself with the latest meta data for us automatically (so we don’t have to worry about it):

    # downloads all of the latest GEO IP content to
# /usr/share/GeoIP with this simple command:
geoipupdate

# This IP information changes often; so the next
# thing you want to do is create a cronjob to have
# this tool fetch regular updates automatically for
# us to keep the GEO IP Content fresh and up to date!
cat << _EOF > /etc/cron.d/geoipdate
0 12 * * 3 root /usr/bin/geoipupdate &>/dev/null
_EOF

    Apache Users: Step 2a of 3

    AWStats depends on the log files to build it’s statistics from, so it’s important we point it to the right directory. Apache logs have been pretty much standardized and AWStats just works with them. If your web page is being hosted through Apache then your log files are most likely being placed in /var/log/httpd. If you’re using NginX (and not Apache), you can skip over this section and to Step 2b of 3 instead.

    Make sure AWStats knows it’s dealing with Apache log files (make sure you’ve still got the $WEBSITE variable defined from above):

    # Make sure our environment variables are defined
# WEBSITE and DATADIR
########################################
# Apache Users Should run The Following
########################################
# Now if you're logs are created from Apache you
# need to run the following:
# Log Format (Type 1 is for Apache)
sed -i -e "s|^\(LogFormat\)=.*$|\1=1|g" \
   /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf

    Now what we want to do is take all of the logs files associated with our website in /var/log/httpd and build one great big (sorted) log file we can get all of our statistics out of:

    # logresolvmerge.pl is a fantastic tool that ships with
# awstats and merges (and sorts) all of our logs. We
# place the output into our $DATADIR (which we declared
# earlier):
/usr/share/awstats/tools/logresolvemerge.pl \
   /var/log/httpd/access.log \
   /var/log/httpd/access.log-????????.gz \
    > $DATADIR/access.log

    Nginx Users

    NginX logs have a slightly different format then the Apache logs and therefore require a slightly different configuration to work. If your web page is being hosted through NginX then your log files are most likely being placed in /var/log/nginx. If you’re using Apache (and not NginX), then you can skip over this section as long as you’ve already done Step 2a of 3 instead.

    Make sure AWStats knows it’s dealing with NginX log files otherwise it won’t be able to interpret them. Also be sure to have your $WEBSITE variable defined:

    # Make sure our environment variables are defined
# WEBSITE and DATADIR
########################################
# NginX Users Should run The Following
########################################
# If you're using NginX, you'll want to adjust
# your awstat LogFormat entry as follows:
sed -i -e "s|^\(LogFormat\)=.*$|\1=\"%host %other %logname %time1 %methodurl %code %bytesd %refererquot %uaquot\"|g" \
   /etc/awstats/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf

    Now we take all of the logs files associated with our website in /var/log/nginx and build one great big (sorted) log file we can get all of our statistics out of:

    # logresolvmerge.pl is a fantastic tool that ships with
# awstats and merges (and sorts) all of our logs. We
# place the output into our $DATADIR (which we declared
# earlier):
/usr/share/awstats/tools/logresolvemerge.pl \
   /var/log/nginx/access.log \
   /var/log/nginx/access.log-????????.gz \
    > $DATADIR/access.log

    Statistic Generation: Step 3 of 3

    At this point we have all the info we need 

    # Make sure our environment variables are defined
# WEBSITE and DATADIR
########################################
# (Create) and/or Update our Stats
########################################
/usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/awstats.pl \
   -config=$WEBSITE

# The following builds us a PDF file containing all
# of our statistics in addition to a website we can
# optionally host if we want.
# The following would allow you to gather statistics for
# a given year:
#   /usr/share/awstats/tools/awstats_buildstaticpages.pl \
#      -config=$WEBSITE -buildpdf \
#      -month=all -year=$(date +'%Y') \
#      -dir=$DATADIR/static \
#      -buildpdf=/usr/bin/htmldoc

# This will build statistics with all the information we have:
/usr/share/awstats/tools/awstats_buildstaticpages.pl \
   -config=$WEBSITE -buildpdf \
   -dir=$DATADIR/static \
   -buildpdf=/usr/bin/htmldoc

# - The main website will appear as:
#      $DATADIR/static/awstats.$WEBSITE.html
#    But this 'main' website links to several other websites
#    that can also all be found in the $DATADIR/static
#    directory
# - The pdf file will appear as:
#      $DATADIR/static/awstats.$WEBSITE.pdf

    Consider throwing the above into a script file and having it ran in a cron job!

    Hosting The Statistics

    This option is purely optional; but but here is some simple configurations you can use if you want to access these generated statistics from your browser.

    Note: I intentionally keep things simple in this section. AWStats can be configured so that you can update your statistics via it’s very own website (see AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser directive in the site configuration). However I don’t recommend this option and therefore do not document it below.

    NginX

    A simple NginX configuration might look like this:

    # Make sure our environment variables are defined
# WEBSITE and DATADIR
cat << _EOF > /etc/nginx/default.d/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf
   # Visit your statistics by browsing to:
   # if WEBSITE was equal nuxref.com, you'd visit the stats:
   # http://localhost/stats/nuxref.com/
   location /stats/$WEBSITE/ {
      alias   $DATADIR/$WEBSITE/static/;
      index  awstats.$WEBSITE.html;

      ## Set 1.2.3.4 to your own IP address and uncomment
      ## the entries below to 'only' allow yourself access to
      ## these stats:
      # allow 1.2.3.4/32;
      # deny all;

      location /stats/css/ {
          alias /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/css/;
      }

      location /stats/icon/ {
          alias /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/icon/;
      }
   }
_EOF

    Don’t forget to reload NginX so it takes on your new configuration (and makes that statistics page visible):

    # Reload NginX
systemctl reload nginx.service

    Apache

    # Make sure our environment variables are defined
# WEBSITE and DATADIR
cat << _EOF > /etc/httpd/conf.d/awstats.$WEBSITE.conf
   # Visit your statistics by browsing to:
   # if WEBSITE was equal nuxref.com, you'd visit the stats:
   # https://localhost/stats/nuxref.com/
   Alias /stats/$WEBSITE/ "$DATADIR/$WEBSITE/static/"
   <Directory "$DATADIR/$WEBSITE/static/">
      Options FollowSymLinks
      AllowOverride None
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all

      ## Set 1.2.3.4 to your own IP address and uncomment
      ## the entries below to 'only' allow yourself access to
      ## these stats:
      # Order deny,allow
      # Deny from all
      # Allow from 1.2.3.4/255.255.255.255
   </Directory>
_EOF

    Don’t forget to reload Apache so it takes on your new configuration (and makes that statistics page visible):

    # Reload Apache
systemctl reload httpd.service

    Credit

    This blog took me a long time to put together and test! The repository hosting alone accommodates all my blog entries up to this date. I took the open source available to me and rebuilt it to make it an easier solution and decided to share it. If you like what you see and wish to copy and paste this HOWTO, please reference back to this blog post at the very least. It’s really all I ask.

    Sources

Linux Gaming, Missing Linux Packages

FreeOrion for Fedora

Leave a comment

Introduction

FreeOrion is a turn-based space empire and galactic conquest (4X) computer game. But more importantly, it works on Linux! The good news is, I’ve already done all the heavy lifting for you and compiled the game in easy to install RPMs. In fact, there is absolutely no development knowledge or compilation requirements at all! The RPM files I’ve put together will specifically allow anyone (running Fedora) to go right ahead and enjoy the game!

FreeOrion Screenshot
FreeOrion Screenshot

The Goods

FreeOrion Ship Parts
You’ll need to have Fedora 23 or higher for this game to work due to the library requirements FreeOrion requires.

I packaged the whole thing up in RPMs to make your life easy. You can acquire the RPMs directly from my repository using dnf. But if you prefer, here is the direct link to the repository files:

Package Distro Description
freeorion fc23 / fc24 The core game files. This RPM must be installed in conjunction with freeorion-data.
freeorion-data fc23 / fc24 This RPM provides all of the data files used by FreeOrion

For those interested in building this themselves, you can access the source RPM here.

A setup could be as simple as the following if you’re hooked up to my repositories already:

# Install FreeOrion
# make sure you're connected to https://nuxref.com/repo
dnf install freeorion

Getting Started

FreeOrion - Fleet Move
After you’ve installed the RPMs, you’ll be able to launch FreeOrion from within the desktop search. You can also launch it from the command line by simply typing freeorion. You’ll be able to choose to create a new game from here and create your very first galaxy!

You can also launch the application up with some parameters that can tweak your experience:

/usr/bin/freeorion is the main application you’ll run. If you type it on the command line with the –help (-h) switch, you’ll get an incredible list of customization you can perform. For example:

# --show-fps 1     : Display frames per second while you play
# --fullscreen 1    : Start game in fullscreen mode
# --log-level WARN : The default logging mode is DEBUG which can add for
#                    quite a bit of extra overhead. setting this variable
#                    to WARN can speed things up a little.
freeorion --show-fps 1 --fullscreen 1 --log-level WARN

There are 2 directories you’ll want to know about:

Directory Description
~/.config/freeorion The directory all of your local configuration gets written to when the game is running.
~/.local/share/freeorion The directory that the system will write some variable data to (such as your saved games).

How Do I Play

This guide here is probably a good start. But in a nutshell, the first thing the game will do for you is generate you a galaxy filled with planets and stars. You will take turns with A.I. and/or other players (if doing Multiplayer) making choices. You might colonize a planet, gather resources, or maybe just move to another planet. You’ll encounter enemies that you’ll need to fend off too. The game can seem overwhelming and complicated at first. But in a few turns, you’ll pick up things you can do and only get better over time.

Sources

Note: All of the images seen in this blog were taken from the Libre Game Wiki and FreeOrion Wiki. All of the images used had no licenses associated with them whatsoever except the screenshot which is subjected to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) v3.0.

Credit

Preparing the RPMs was the only tricky and original part of this blog. The rest of the information is available everywhere.

If you like what you see and wish to copy and paste this HOWTO, please reference back to this blog post at the very least. It’s really all I ask.

Uncategorized

Hosting Your Own RPM Repository

Leave a comment

Introduction

There are lots of reasons why you might want to host your own RPM repository. A few reasons up front:

  • Speed: Performing a yum (or dnf) update from one of your locally hosted repositories is much faster than checking the ones on the internet!
  • Cost: If you run a business, then you know bandwidth can be expensive. If Linux is the operating system your developers and/or employees use, then hosting the repository internally means they won’t waste bandwidth each time one of them performs a system update. You’ll have downloaded everything once, and provided a central controlled share point they can apply all of their updates from.
  • Retention: Over time, your successfully deployed systems will age and the packages that were once readily available for it may be a lot harder to acquire! Sometimes it’s a good thing to create and manage your own internal repository so that you always have access to the exact RPMs you used to deploy/create your development environment with. This is especially the case for that one rare day that arises requiring you to go back and debug a legacy system of yours. If the packages are already available to you locally; you should have no problem reproducing any detected problems since you’ll be able to reconstruct their environment exactly.
  • Mock: I love this tool; mock allows you to dynamically generate different distributions of CentOS/Fedora (new and old) allowing you to build your applications to test them in it. You simply create a mock environment of the distribution of interest. In this new environment, you can do whatever it was you wanted to, then you can easily blow it away when you’re done. The best part about mock is that it allows you to build/test things without hauling in all of the development libraries into your native working environment. Quite frankly, I couldn’t have hosted or tested half of the things I do in all my blogs and my repository without it. Mock generates it’s ‘throw/away’ environments by connection to a yum repository and setting itself up. If you host your own repositories, it can greatly speed up this process.
  • Consistency: If everyone in your department were to reference the same rpm repository instead of one of the hundreds of mirrors available on the internet, you would consistently be hosting and sharing the same packages internally with your team. This is fantastic in a software development environment where everyone should be using the same packages anyway. This isn’t to say that all public CentOS mirrors are different, but they do go up and down from time to time. They also all synchronize themselves with whatever the latest and greatest at different times too.
  • Mirrors: Even if you just host your own mirror publicly, you’d be doing the Linux community good! You’d become another server of the hundreds already out there providing a source for free software! Your efforts would offload network congestion others face and speed up everyone’s Linux experience.
  • Custom Media: Hosting your own RPM packages can grant you the power to build your own custom media. You can accomplish the same task without hosting internally, but it’s much (,much) slower! This will make for a great topic in another blog though since this process is a topic of it’s own. I do however explain how to host your own custom repositories in this blog though!

Local Hosting Environment

The whole hosting process will take up some disk-space… 150GB or so if you decide to host everything I identify here. Nothing major, but worth noting for those with smaller disk drives.

The first thing you need to do is decide where you’ll host everything from. I will use the following directories for this blog entry:

Directory Details
/var/share/repo The location we’ll host the repository from.
/var/share/isos The location we’ll store our ISO image files in.

First let’s make sure our directories exist:

# Repository data will go here: /var/share/repo
[ ! -d /var/share/repo ] && \
   mkdir -p var/share/repo

# ISOs downloaded/kept will go here: /var/share/isos
[ ! -d /var/share/isos ] && \
   mkdir -p var/share/isos

You’ll want to have the following tools on hand as well if you plan on hosting your own repositories:

# Mirroring tools
yum install -y rsync lftp

# Repository management tools
yum install -y createrepo yum-utils find

Repository Hosting

The next few sections focus on the following repositories; you may or may not need them all. So feel free to just use what you need.

Distribution 64-Bit 32-Bit
CentOS 5.11 x86_64 i386
CentOS 6.8 x86_64 i386
CentOS 7.2 x86_64 n/a

Note: The blog utilizes the lftp tool for all of the synchronization, but the rsync command is also documented in the comments if you prefer that route as well. It’s also worth noting that you can re-run these mirror commands again and again to keep your local repository updated with the latest.

CentOS 5.11

64-bit

# Change to our ISO directory
pushd /var/share/isos

wget http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/isos/x86_64/CentOS-5.11-x86_64-bin-DVD-1of2.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-5.11-x86_64-DVD1.iso
wget http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/isos/x86_64/CentOS-5.11-x86_64-bin-DVD-2of2.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-5.11-x86_64-DVD2.iso

# Create temporary directories to work in
mkdir dvd1
mkdir dvd2

# Mount it
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-5.11-x86_64-DVD1.iso dvd1
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-5.11-x86_64-DVD2.iso dvd2

# CentOS Base Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/os ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/os

# CentOS Updates Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/updates ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/updates

# CentOS Extras Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/extras ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/extras

# Setup EPEL location
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5/x86_64/epel ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5/x86_64/epel

# Create a fixed link to newest repo
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/5/x86_64
ln -snf ../../5.11/x86_64/os os
ln -snf ../../5.11/x86_64/updates updates
ln -snf ../../5.11/x86_64/extras extras
popd

# Set up other repositories
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64
ln -snf ../../5/x86_64/epel epel
popd

# Mirror repository
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd1/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/os/
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd2/CentOS/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/os/Packages/
 
# Cleanup
umount dvd1
umount dvd2
rmdir dvd1
rmdir dvd2
popd

# Mirror (5.11) Updates
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/updates/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/updates/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/5.11/updates/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/updates"

# Mirror (5.11) Updates
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/extras/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/extras/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/5.11/extras/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/x86_64/extras"

# EPEL: (see https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mirrormanager/mirrors/EPEL/5 for list of servers)
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/fedora-enchilada/epel/6/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/5/x86_64/epel/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /fedora/epel/5/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/5/x86_64/epel"

32-bit

# Change to our ISO directory
pushd /var/share/isos

wget http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/isos/i386/CentOS-5.11-i386-bin-DVD-1of2.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-5.11-i386-DVD1.iso
wget http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/isos/i386/CentOS-5.11-i386-bin-DVD-2of2.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-5.11-i386-DVD2.iso

# Create temporary directories to work in
mkdir dvd1
mkdir dvd2

# Mount it
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-5.11-i386-DVD1.iso dvd1
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-5.11-i386-DVD2.iso dvd2

# CentOS Base Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/os ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/os

# CentOS Updates Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/updates ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/updates

# CentOS Extras Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/extras ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/extras

# Setup EPEL Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/5/i386/epel ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/5/i386/epel

# Create a fixed link to newest repo
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/5/i386
ln -snf ../../5.11/i386/os os
ln -snf ../../5.11/i386/updates updates
ln -snf ../../5.11/i386/extras extras
popd

# Set up other repositories
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386
ln -snf ../../5/i386/epel epel
popd

# Mirror repository
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd1/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/os/
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd2/CentOS/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/os/Packages/
 
# Cleanup
umount dvd1
umount dvd2
rmdir dvd1
rmdir dvd2
popd

# Mirror (5.11) Updates
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/updates/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/updates/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/5.11/updates/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/updates"

# Mirror (5.11) Extras
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/5.11/extras/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/extras/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/5.11/extras/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/5.11/i386/extras"

# EPEL: (see https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mirrormanager/mirrors/EPEL/5 for list of servers)
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/fedora-enchilada/epel/6/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/5/i386/epel/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /fedora/epel/5/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/5/i386/epel"

CentOS 6.8

64-bit

# Change to our ISO directory
pushd /var/share/isos

wget http://mirror.its.dal.ca/centos/6.8/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.8-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-6.8-x86_64-DVD1.iso
wget http://mirror.its.dal.ca/centos/6.8/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.8-x86_64-bin-DVD2.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-6.8-x86_64-DVD2.iso

# Create temporary directories to work in
mkdir dvd1
mkdir dvd2

# Mount it
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-6.8-x86_64-DVD1.iso dvd1
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-6.8-x86_64-DVD2.iso dvd2

# CentOS Base Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/os ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/os

# CentOS Updates Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/updates ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/updates

# CentOS Extras Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/extras ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/extras

# Setup EPEL location
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6/x86_64/epel ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6/x86_64/epel

# Create a fixed link to newest repo
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/6/x86_64
ln -snf ../../6.8/x86_64/os os
ln -snf ../../6.8/x86_64/updates updates
ln -snf ../../6.8/x86_64/extras extras
popd

# EPEL Repository Mirror
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64
ln -snf ../../6/x86_64/epel epel
popd

# Mirror repository
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd1/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/os/
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd2/Packages/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/os/Packages/

# Cleanup
umount dvd1
umount dvd2
rmdir dvd1
rmdir dvd2
popd

# Mirror (6.8) Updates
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/6.8/updates/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/updates/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/6.8/updates/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/updates"

# Mirror (6.8) Extras
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/6.8/extras/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/extras/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/6.8/extras/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/x86_64/extras"

# EPEL: (see https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mirrormanager/mirrors/EPEL/6 for list of servers)
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/fedora-enchilada/epel/6/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/6/x86_64/epel/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /fedora/epel/6/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/6/x86_64/epel"

32-bit

# Change to our ISO directory
pushd /var/share/isos

wget http://mirror.its.dal.ca/centos/6.8/isos/i386/CentOS-6.8-i386-bin-DVD1.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-6.8-i386-DVD1.iso
wget http://mirror.its.dal.ca/centos/6.8/isos/i386/CentOS-6.8-i386-bin-DVD2.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-6.8-i386-DVD2.iso

# Create temporary directories to work in
mkdir dvd1
mkdir dvd2

# Mount it
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-6.8-i386-DVD1.iso dvd1
mount -o loop,ro CentOS-6.8-i386-DVD2.iso dvd2

# CentOS Base Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/os ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/os

# CentOS Updates Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/updates ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/updates

# CentOS Extras Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/extras ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/extras

# EPEL Repository Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/6/i386/epel ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/6/i386/epel

# Create a fixed link to newest repo
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/6/i386
ln -snf ../../6.8/i386/os os
ln -snf ../../6.8/i386/updates updates
ln -snf ../../6.8/i386/extras extras
popd

# Set up other repositories
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386
ln -snf ../../6/i386/epel epel
popd

# Mirror repository
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd1/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/os/
rsync -av --ignore-existing dvd2/Packages/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/os/Packages/

# Cleanup
umount dvd1
umount dvd2
rmdir dvd1
rmdir dvd2
popd

# Mirror (6.8) Updates
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/6.8/updates/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/updates/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/6.8/updates/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/updates"

# Mirror (6.8) Extras
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/6.8/extras/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/extras/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/6.8/extras/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/6.8/i386/extras"

# EPEL: (see https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mirrormanager/mirrors/EPEL/6 for list of servers)
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/fedora-enchilada/epel/6/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/6/i386/epel/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /fedora/epel/6/i386/ /var/share/repo/centos/6/i386/epel"

CentOS 7.2

64-bit

# Change to our ISO directory
pushd /var/share/isos

# CentOS 7.2
[ ! -d /var/share/isos/ ] && mkdir -p /var/share/isos/
wget http://mirror.its.dal.ca/centos/7.2.1511/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-Everything-1511.iso \
   -O /var/share/isos/CentOS-7.2.1511-x86_64-Everything.iso

# CentOS Base Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/os ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/os

# CentOS Updates Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/updates ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/updates

# CentOS Extras Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/extras ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/extras

# EPEL Repository Mirror
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/epel ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/epel

# Create a fixed link to newest repo
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64
ln -snf ../../7.2/x86_64/os os
ln -snf ../../7.2/x86_64/updates updates
ln -snf ../../7.2/x86_64/extras extras
popd

# Set up other repositories
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64
ln -snf ../../7/x86_64/epel epel
popd

# Mount it
mount -o loop,ro /var/share/isos/CentOS-7.2.1511-x86_64-Everything.iso \
    /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/os

# Update our fstab file so we persistently do this on reboots; This saves disk space
sed -i -e '/CentOS-7\.2\.1511-x86_64-Everything\.iso/d' /etc/fstab
echo '/var/share/isos/CentOS-7.2.1511-x86_64-Everything.iso /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/os iso9660 loop,ro,auto 0 0' >> /etc/fstab
# If you prefer not to run the above command, you can follow through with the same rsync
# commands identified above and mirror the contents of the iso to disk

# Mirror (7.2) Updates
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# Updates: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/7.2.1511/updates/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/updates/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/7.2.1511/updates/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/updates"

# Mirror (7.2) Extras
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# EPEL: (see https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/ for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/centos/7.2.1511/extras/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/extras/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /centos/7.2.1511/extras/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64/extras"

# Mirror EPEL
# In the future you can run these commands again and again to update your repository
# EPEL: (see https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mirrormanager/mirrors/EPEL/7 for list of servers)
# rsync -av --ignore-existing rsync://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/fedora-enchilada/epel/7/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/epel/
# or via lftp:
lftp mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca -e "mirror --verbose /fedora/epel/7/x86_64/ /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/epel"

Web Hosting

Once you’ve got your repositories mirrored, you need to host them. Here is the easiest way to do so:
If you’re (planning on) using NginX, then the following will get you going:

# Install nginx (if it's not there already)
yum install nginx -y

# Enable for future reboots
systemctl enable nginx.service

# Start it up
systemctl start nginx.service

cat << _EOF > /etc/nginx/default.d/repo.conf
location /repo/ {
   alias         /var/share/repo/;
   autoindex on;
}
_EOF
# Reload
systemctl reload nginx.service

Now you should be able to access your website by visiting the server you set this up on with /repo as the path. ie: http://localhost/repo

SELinux

Users running SELinux in enforcing mode will want to do the following so that they’re repository can be hosted properly:

# make sure /var/share/repo can host website content without conflicting
# with SELinux
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t '/var/share/repo(/.*)?'

YUM Repositories

Now we’ll want to update our servers around our office, or maybe just on this PC we’re using to point to our new repositories. Here is probably the easiest way:

# Disable any existing repository setup (the following has
# to be ran as root):
pushd /etc/yum.repo.d/
sed -e 's/^\(enabled\)=.*/\1=0/g' \
   fedora*.repo centos*.repo epel*.repo &>/dev/null
popd

# Set this variable to the ip/host of the machine you set up your
# repository on:
MYREPOADDR=localhost

# Now install our new file:
cat << _EOF > /etc/yum.repo.d/centos.internal.repo
[internal-base]
name=CentOS \$releasever - \$basearch - Base
baseurl=http://$MYREPOADDR/repo/centos/\$releasever/\$basearch/os/
enabled=1
priority=1
gpgcheck=0
skip_if_unavailable=False

[internal-updates]
name=CentOS \$releasever - \$basearch - Updates
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://$MYREPOADDR/repo/centos/\$releasever/\$basearch/updates/
enabled=1
priority=1
gpgcheck=0
skip_if_unavailable=True

[internal-extras]
name=CentOS \$releasever - \$basearch - Extras
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://$MYREPOADDR/repo/centos/\$releasever/\$basearch/extras/
enabled=1
priority=1
gpgcheck=0
skip_if_unavailable=True

[internal-epel]
name=CentOS \$releasever - \$basearch - Internal EPEL
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://$MYREPOADDR/repo/centos/\$releasever/\$basearch/epel/
enabled=1
priority=1
gpgcheck=0
skip_if_unavailable=True
_EOF

You can easily take the examples provided here and alter them for other repositories you wish to host.

Custom Repositories

Perhaps you’re picking and choosing RPMs from a ton of different sources, or you’re building your own. It’s a good idea not to touch the repositories we’re already mirroring. Leave them exactly the way they are. However, you can create your own repository instead that you can place your personal collection of rpms in:

# Lets presume we want to start a custom CentOS 7 (64-bit) repository.
# we'll call it 'custom' for now, but you can call it whatever you want

[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom ] && \
    mkdir -p /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom

# Create a fixed link to our repo
pushd /var/share/repo/centos/7.2/x86_64
ln -snf ../../7/x86_64/custom custom
popd

# Okay... now you can drop all the RPMs you want into this custom repository.
# just copy them in; no strings attached.
cp my.awesome.application-1.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm

# The next step is to make the repository accessible by yum
# If you're using dnf, there is no problem, these commands still apply:

# First we want to reset our repodata folder.  This probably won't
# exist the first time you do this, but in the future, when you add
# more rpms into this directory, this will be an essential step:
[ -d /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom/repodata ] && \
    rm -rf /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom/repodata

# Now lets clean out any duplicate/old RPM entries
# This is optional; it basically looks for 2 RPMs of the same name
# but of different versions and only keeps the newest.  If you like
# hanging on to all of the versions of your software, you don't
# need to run the below command.
repomanage -o /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom/repodata | \
   xargs rm -f

The next step requires us to generate a comps file. These are XML files that define details of our repository. You can get complicated and define it yourself if you like, but to make things simple, you can just use this script i wrote which will generate one on the fly based on the directory you specify it to parse:

#!/bin/sh
# Name: updaterepo
# Author: Chris Caron <lead2gold@gmail.com>
# URL: See https://nuxref.com for details
# Description:
#   A simple script for creating a repository directory.
#
# Syntax: updaterepo <path_to_repository_hosting_rpms>
#
REPODIR=$1
if [ -z "$REPODIR" ]; then
   echo "You must specify a repository directory to scan (containing rpms)."
   exit 1
fi

if [ ! -d "$REPODIR" ]; then
   echo "You must specify a repository directory to scan (containing rpms)."
   exit 1
fi

# Ensure we're dealing with absolute paths
pushd $REPODIR &>/dev/null && REPODIR=$(pwd) && popd &>/dev/null

# Some Default Variables; please feel free to change these to
# suit your own needs and package identification. Whatever you
# specify here will become a 'group' as far as yum and dnf are
# concerned allowing you to run (set $ID according):
#   yum groupinstall custom
ID="custom"
NAME="Core"
DESC="Custom Built Packages"

# Generate a comps file for a repository dynamically
COMPSFILE=comps-$ID.xml
COMPSDIR=$REPODIR/repodata
COMPS=$COMPSDIR/$COMPSFILE

# Directory Management
[ -d $COMPSDIR ] && rm -rf $COMPSDIR
[ ! -d $COMPSDIR ] && mkdir -p $COMPSDIR

FILES=$(find -L $REPODIR -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.rpm" -exec basename {} \;)

   cat << _EOF > "$COMPS"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE comps PUBLIC "-//REDHAT//DTD Comps info//EN" "comps.dtd">
<comps>
  <group>
    <id>$ID</id>
    <name>$NAME</name>
    <description>$DESC</description>
    <default>True</default>
    <uservisible>True</uservisible>
    <packagelist>
_EOF
for FILE in $FILES; do
   PFILE=$(rpm -qp "$REPODIR/$FILE" --nosignature --queryformat="%{NAME}" 2>/dev/null)
   cat << _EOF >> "$COMPS"
         <packagereq type="default">$PFILE</packagereq>
_EOF
done
cat << _EOF >> "$COMPS"
    </packagelist>
  </group>
  <category>
    <id>$ID</id>
    <name>$NAME</name>
    <display_order>99</display_order>
    <grouplist>
      <groupid>$ID</groupid>
    </grouplist>
  </category>
</comps>
_EOF

# Now rebuild our repo information
createrepo -d -q -g $COMPS $REPODIR

Place the script file above into your /usr/bin directory if you like (called updaterepo) and call it on any directory you want to turn into a repository from then on:

# Make sure our new script is executable
chmod 775 /bin/updaterepo

# Now call it against any directory we want to turn into a repository
[ ! -d /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom ] && 
    mkdir -p  /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom

# Now we can copy our rpms into this directory at will.
# Then we just need to run this command when we're done to apply
# our changes. This will allow people who are pointing to our
# repository to see these new changes we made and access it via yum/dnf
updaterepo  /var/share/repo/centos/7/x86_64/custom
[code]

You're done! Now you can update your <strong>/etc/yum.repos.d/</strong> to include this new location with each yum call you make! Just use the other examples already provided in this blog as a template!

<h1>Mock</h1>
<a href="https://github.com/rpm-software-management/mock/wiki" target="_blank">Mock</a> is a fantastic tool for RPM management.  It's also a great tool for someone who just wants to test and see if they're code will run on another platform.  You could almost think of Mock as a poor man's <a href="https://linuxcontainers.org/" target="_blank">Linux Container</a> which are pretty popular these days.  Mock isn't as contained, but it can accomplish the same feat and is even faster since it doesn't have the (Linux) container overhead.

Mock is set up as follows:
[code lang="bash"]
# first install it (as root)
yum install -y mock

# If you followed all of the instructions above, then this will pull mock
# out of your internal epel repository! Nice!

# Now just add your user account you usually use on your system
# (a non-root user).  This user will be granted mock privileges.
# substitute [User name] below with the username you usually use:
usermod -a -G mock [User name]

Just like that’ you’re now ready to create mock environments. Now by default, mock is configured to fetch it’s information from the external repositories on the internet. But it’s configuration is really easy to get ahold of and update. Check out the /etc/mock directory.

You can now edit the mock environment you wish to host and optionally update the repositories to point to your own. For example, pick a file like /etc/mock/epel-7-x86_64.cfg which is used to generate a 64-bit Enterprise Linux (RedHat/CentOS) 7.x environment.

You’ll see entries like this which will look very familiar (it’s a yum/dnf configuration file entry just like the ones identified above). You can comment out the mirrorlist entry and swap it with your own local repository.

...  ...
[base]
name=BaseOS
# comment out the mirrorlist reference:
# mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=7&arch=x86_64&repo=os
# point to our own local repository instead:
baseurl=http://localhost/repo/centos/7/x86_64/os/
failovermethod=priority
gpgkey=file:///usr/share/distribution-gpg-keys/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
gpgcheck=1

[updates]
name=updates
enabled=1
# comment out the mirrorlist reference:
# mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=7&arch=x86_64&repo=updates
# point to our own local repository instead:
baseurl=http://localhost/repo/centos/7/x86_64/updates/
failovermethod=priority
gpgkey=file:///usr/share/distribution-gpg-keys/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
gpgcheck=1

[extras]
name=extras
enabled=1
# comment out the mirrorlist reference:
# mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=7&arch=x86_64&repo=extras
# point to our own local repository instead:
baseurl=http://localhost/repo/centos/7/x86_64/extras/
failovermethod=priority
gpgkey=file:///usr/share/distribution-gpg-keys/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
gpgcheck=1

[epel]
name=epel
# comment out the mirrorlist reference:
# mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=epel-7&arch=x86_64
# point to our own local repository instead:
baseurl=http://localhost/repo/centos/7/x86_64/updates/
failovermethod=priority
gpgkey=file:///usr/share/distribution-gpg-keys/epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7
gpgcheck=1

...  ...

You can also just copy and paste one of the config files to another and change it around. Add repositories, remove some; the config file for mock is really straight forward if you use another as a template.

Mock is pretty straight forward to use. You just need to pass it in the environment you’re using with each call you make to it.

# Initialize a Mock Environment of Enterprise Linux 7 (64-bit):
mock -r epel-7-x86_64 --init

# The above command works because a /etc/mock/epel-7-x86_64.cfg file exists.
# mock is relatively quiet and doesn't output a lot of information which can
# sometimes make you unsure if it's actually doing anything.  So it doesn't
# hurt to also get in the habit of adding -v to every single mock action you
# perform.

# You can install RPMs into your mock environment easily with:
mock -v -r epel-7-x86_64 install hostname vi

# The following command will cause us to leave our current native environment
# and access the mock environment (an advanced chroot basically):
mock -v -r epel-7-x86_64 --shell

# Once inside, you can do whatever you want; just press Ctrl-D or type 'exit'
# to return back to your normal environment.

# You can even rebuild a source rpm package from another distribution
# into one you might use.  For example, perhaps you visited pkgs.org and saw
# a newer version of an awesome application available for Fedora 24, but
# can't get it for CentOS 7.  Well you can download the src.rpm file and
# rebuild it using mock:
mock -v -r epel-7-x86_64 --rebuild awesome.application-v2.0.0-1.fc24.src.rpm \
    --resultdir=awesome.app

# I added the --resultdir= on the line above to tell mock that after it rebuilds
# our new RPMs for CentOS 7, it places them into a directory called 'awesome.app'.
# This isn't necessary, but makes it easier to find the RPMs when the build is
# complete.

Credit

If you like what you see and wish to copy and paste this HOWTO, please reference back to this blog post at the very least. It’s really all I ask.

Sources

  • Mock: A fantastic development tool that allows you to dynamically generate a fully functional development environment for a CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora distribution of your choice. It allows you to keep development libraries out of your native (working) environment keeping things clean.
  • Some good repositories worth mirroring (in no particular order):
    • CentOS 5.x, 6.x and 7.x: Here is a list of all of the mirrors you can sync from.
    • Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL): CentOS/Red Hat users shouldn’t be without this one. It has tons of the building blocks you might need to reconstruct things with.
    • NuxRef: Yes… my repository; I mean why not, right?
    • Fedora: Bleeding edge distributions don’t stick around long. After a year or so, you’ll be hard-pressed to find RPMs. It might be wise to mirror the distribution you’re using if you don’t plan on upgrading anytime soon. There is enough information in this blog to mirror a Fedora repository if you want to do so.