Linux Software: Insight on mrepo - Advanced Apt, Yum Repository Manager

If you are wondering what mrepo actually is, YAM has been renamed and changed to mrepo. mrepo builds a local APT/Yum RPM repository from local ISO files, downloaded updates, and extra packages from 3rd party repositories. It takes care of setting up the ISO files, downloading the RPMs, configuring HTTP access and providing PXE/TFTP resources for remote network installations.

Developers at first had mrepo in mind to assign remote network installation. Let us take and example of a laptop where you can install various distributions without the help of a CD/DVD or floppy. mrepo also helps in maintaining centralized update server.

Doing a remote installation only requires a configured DHCP-server, the TFTP service and a Webserver configured with mrepo. Then boot your system using a PXE-enabled network card.

To update your local systems, configure either Smart, Apt, Yum or up2date and point them to your local mrepo server.

Features

• Easy Yum-alike configuration
• Supports mirroring using FISH, FTP, HTTP, RSYNC, SFTP, YOU and RHN
• Supports Smart, Apt, Yum and up2date (as well as synaptic, yumgui and other derivatives)
• Can download and distribute updates from RHN (Red Hat Network) channels
• Can download and distribute updates from YOU (YaST Online Update) channels
• Can work directly from ISO images (so you don’t need extra diskspace to store ISOs or copy RPMs)
• Supports Red Hat, Fedora Core, Red Hat Enterprise (TaoLinux, CentOS) and Yellow Dog Linux out of the box
• Allows for remote network installation (using a PXE-enabled NIC on target systems)
• Support for 3rd party repositories and vendor packages
• Allows to maintain your own customized (corporate) repository
• Allow for chaining mrepo servers in large organisations with remote sites
• Can hardlink duplicate packages (to save precious diskspace)

What’s New in mrepo 0.8.4

• The project was renamed from Yam to mrepo.
• Ready-to-use distribution configurations were improved.
• Proxy support was added to RHN support (rhnget).
• A new rhnget-cleanup directive allows the user to automatically clean up old packages.
• A Scientific Linux distribution configuration was added.
• Fixes were made to make RHN support work on CentOS.

mrepo Quick Guide Installation

Installation

apt-get update
apt-get install mrepo

yum install mrepo

Configuration

General settings

###
### Configuration file for mrepo
###

[main]
srcdir   = /var/rep
wwwdir   = /var/www/html/rep
confdir  = /etc/mrepo.conf.d
arch     = i386
ametadata = apt yum repomd

Web server settings

Repositories settings

Files: /etc/mrepo.conf.d/*.conf

These files contain all repositories configurations. You should split your repositories configuration in more files.

Conclusion

So here is mrepo for you. Give us your feedback.

You can have a look at the source code from here or you can contact the developer too at dag AT wieers DOT com