yum.conf
yum.conf(5) yum configuration file yum.conf(5)
NAME
yum.conf - Configuration file for yum(8).
DESCRIPTION
Yum uses a configuration file at /etc/yum.conf.
Additional configuration files are also read from the directories set
by the reposdir option (default is ‘/etc/yum.repos.d’ and
‘/etc/yum/repos.d’). See the reposdir option below for further
details.
PARAMETERS
There are two types of sections in the yum configuration file(s): main
and repository. Main defines all global configuration options. There
should be only one main section. The repository section(s) define the
configuration for each repository/server. There should be one or more
repository sections.
[main] OPTIONS
The [main] section must exist for yum to do anything. It consists of
the following options:
cachedir
Directory where yum should store its cache and db files. The
default is ‘/var/cache/yum’.
reposdir
A list of directories where yum should look for .repo files
which define repositories to use. Default is ‘/etc/yum.repos.d,
/etc/yum/repos.d’. Each file in this directory should contain
one or more repository sections as documented in [repository]
options below. These will be merged with the repositories
defined in /etc/yum.conf to form the complete set of reposito-
ries that yum will use.
debuglevel
Debug message output level. Practical range is 0-10. Default is
‘2’.
errorlevel
Error message output level. Practical range is 0-10. Default is
‘2’.
logfile
Full directory and file name for where yum should write its log
file.
gpgcheck
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not it should per-
form a GPG signature check on packages. When this is set in the
[main] section it sets the default for all repositories. This
option also determines whether or not an install of a package
from a local RPM file will be GPG signature checked. The
default is ‘0’.
assumeyes
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Determines whether or not yum prompts for
confirmation of critical actions. Default is ‘0’ (do prompt).
Commmand-line option: -y
alwaysprompt
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Without this option, yum will not prompt for
confirmation when the list of packages to be installed exactly
matches those given on the command line. Unless assumeyes is
enabled, it will still prompt for package removal, or when
additional packages need to be installed to fulfill dependen-
cies. Default is ‘1’.
tolerant
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. If enabled, then yum will be tolerant of
errors on the command line with regard to packages. For exam-
ple: if you request to install foo, bar and baz and baz is
installed; yum won’t error out complaining that baz is already
installed. Default to ‘0’ (not tolerant).
Commmand-line option: -t
exclude
List of packages to exclude from updates or installs. This
should be a space separated list. Shell globs using wildcards
(eg. * and ?) are allowed.
exactarch
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Set to ‘1’ to make yum update only update
the architectures of packages that you have installed. ie: with
this enabled yum will not install an i686 package to update an
i386 package. Default is ‘1’.
installonlypkgs
List of packages that should only ever be installed, never
updated. Kernels in particular fall into this category.
Defaults to ‘kernel, kernel-smp, kernel-bigmem, kernel-enter-
prise, kernel-debug, kernel-unsupported’.
kernelpkgnames
List of package names that are kernels. This is really only
here for the updating of kernel packages and should be removed
out in the yum 2.1 series.
showdupesfromrepos
Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Set to ‘1’ if you wish to show any duplicate
packages from any repository. Set to ‘0’ if you want only to
see the newest packages from any repository. Default is ‘0’.
obsoletes
This option only has affect during an update. It enables yum’s
obsoletes processing logic. Useful when doing distribution
level upgrades. See also the yum upgrade command documentation
for more details (yum(8)).
Commmand-line option: --obsoletes
overwrite_groups
Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Used to determine yum’s behaviour if two or
more repositories offer the package groups with the same name.
If overwrite_groups is ‘1’ then the group packages of the last
matching repository will be used. If overwrite_groups is ‘0’
then the groups from all matching repositories will be merged
together as one large group.
installroot
Specifies an alternative installroot, relative to which all
packages will be installed.
Commmand-line option: --installroot
distroverpkg
The package used by yum to determine the "version" of the dis-
tribution. This can be any installed package. Default is ‘red-
hat-release’.
diskspacecheck
Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Set this to ‘0’ to disable the checking for
sufficient diskspace before a RPM transaction is run. Default
is ‘1’ (perform the check).
tsflags
Comma or space separated list of transaction flags to pass to
the rpm transaction set. These include ’noscripts’, ’notrig-
gers’, ’nodocs’, ’test’, and ’repackage’. You can set all/any
of them. However, if you don’t know what these do in the con-
text of an rpm transaction set you’re best leaving it alone.
Default is an empty list.
recent Number of days back to look for ‘recent’ packages added to a
repository. Used by the list recent command. Default is ‘7’.
retries
Set the number of times any attempt to retrieve a file should
retry before returning an error. Setting this to ‘0’ makes yum
try forever. Default is ‘6’.
keepalive
Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Set whether HTTP keepalive should be used
for HTTP/1.1 servers that support it. This can improve transfer
speeds by using one connection when downloading multiple files
from a repository. Default is ‘1’.
timeout
Number of seconds to wait for a connection before timing out.
Defaults to 30 seconds. This may be too short of a time for
extremely overloaded sites.
http_caching
Determines how upstream HTTP caches are instructed to handle
any HTTP downloads that Yum does. This option can take the fol-
lowing values:
‘all’ means that all HTTP downloads should be cached.
‘packages’ means that only RPM package downloads should be
cached (but not repository metadata downloads).
‘none’ means that no HTTP downloads should be cached.
The default is ‘all’. This is recommended unless you are expe-
riencing caching related issues. Try to at least use ‘packages’
to minimise load on repository servers.
throttle
Enable bandwidth throttling for downloads. This option can be
expressed as a absolute data rate in bytes/sec. An SI prefix
(k, M or G) may be appended to the bandwidth value (eg. ‘5.5k’
is 5.5 kilobytes/sec, ‘2M’ is 2 Megabytes/sec).
Alternatively, this option can specify the percentage of total
bandwidth to use (eg. ‘60%’). In this case the bandwidth option
should be used to specify the maximum available bandwidth.
Set to ‘0’ to disable bandwidth throttling. This is the
default.
bandwidth
Use to specify the maximum available network bandwidth in
bytes/second. Used with the throttle option (above). If throt-
tle is a percentage and bandwidth is ‘0’ then bandwidth throt-
tling will be disabled. If throttle is expressed as a data rate
(bytes/sec) then this option is ignored. Default is ‘0’ (no
bandwidth throttling).
commands
List of functional commands to run if no functional commands
are specified on the command line (eg. "update foo bar baz
quux"). None of the short options (eg. -y, -e, -d) are
accepted for this option.
proxy url to the proxy server that yum should use.
proxy_username
username to use for proxy
proxy_password
password for this proxy
plugins
Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Global switch to enable or disable yum plug-
ins. Default is ‘0’ (plugins disabled). See the PLUGINS section
of the yum(8) man for more information on installing yum plug-
ins.
pluginpath
A list of directories where yum should look for plugin modules.
Default is ‘/usr/lib/yum-plugins’.
metadata_expire
Time (in seconds) after which the metadata will expire. So that
if the current metadata downloaded is less than this many
seconds old then yum will not update the metadata against the
repository. If you find that yum is not downloading information
on updates as often as you would like lower the value of this
option.
[repository] OPTIONS
The repository section(s) take the following form:
Example:
[repositoryid]
name=Some name for this repository
baseurl=url://path/to/repository/
repositoryid
Must be a unique name for each repository, one word.
name A human readable string describing the repository.
baseurl
Must be a URL to the directory where the yum repository’s
‘repodata’ directory lives. Can be an http://, ftp:// or
file:// URL. You can specify multiple URLs in one baseurl
statement. The best way to do this is like this:
[repositoryid]
name=Some name for this repository
baseurl=url://server1/path/to/repository/
url://server2/path/to/repository/
url://server3/path/to/repository/
If you list more than one baseurl= statement in a repository
you will find yum will ignore the earlier ones and probably act
bizarrely. Don’t do this, you’ve been warned.
mirrorlist
Specifies a URL to a file containing a list of baseurls. This
can be used instead of or with the baseurl option. Substitution
variables, described below, can be used with this option.
enabled
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not use this
repository.
gpgcheck
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not it should per-
form a GPG signature check on the packages gotten from this
repository.
gpgkey A URL pointing to the ASCII-armoured GPG key file for the
repository. This option is used if yum needs a public key to
verify a package and the required key hasn’t been imported into
the RPM database. If this option is set, yum will automatically
import the key from the specified URL. You will be prompted
before the key is installed unless the assumeyes option is set.
Multiple URLs may be specified here in the same manner as the
baseurl option (above). If a GPG key is required to install a
package from a repository, all keys specified for that reposi-
tory will be installed.
exclude
Same as the [main] exclude option but only for this repository.
Substitution variables, described below, are honored here.
includepkgs
Inverse of exclude. This is a list of packages you want to use
from a repository. If this option lists only one package then
that is all yum will ever see from the repository. Defaults to
an empty list. Substitution variables, described below, are
honored here.
enablegroups
Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Determines whether yum will allow the use of
package groups for this repository. Default is ‘1’ (package
groups are allowed).
failovermethod
Either ‘roundrobin’ or ‘priority’.
‘roundrobin’ randomly selects a URL out of the list of URLs to
start with and proceeds through each of them as it encounters a
failure contacting the host.
‘priority’ starts from the first baseurl listed and reads
through them sequentially.
failovermethod defaults to ‘roundrobin’ if not specified.
keepalive
Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not HTTP/1.1
keepalive should be used with this repository. See the global
option in the [main] section above for more information.
timeout
Overrides the timeout option from the [main] section for this
repository.
http_caching
Overrides the http_caching option from the [main] section for
this repository.
retries
Overrides the retries option from the [main] section for this
repository.
throttle
Overrides the throttle option from the [main] section for this
repository.
bandwidth
Overrides the bandwidth option from the [main] section for this
repository.
metadata_expire
Overrides the metadata_expire option from the [main] section
for this repository.
proxy url to the proxy server for this repository. Set to ’_none_’ to
disable the global proxy setting for this repository. If this
is unset it inherits it from the global setting
proxy_username
username to use for proxy. If this is unset it inherits it
from the global setting
proxy_password
password for this proxy. If this is unset it inherits it from
the global setting
URL INCLUDE SYNTAX
The inclusion of external configuration files is supported for
/etc/yum.conf and the .repo files in the /etc/yum.repos.d directory.
To include a URL, use a line of the following format:
include=url://to/some/location
The configuration file will be inserted at the position of the
"include=" line. Included files may contain further include lines.
Yum will abort with an error if an inclusion loop is detected.
VARIABLES
There are a number of variables you can use to ease maintenance of
yum’s configuration files. They are available in the values of several
options including name, baseurl and commands.
$releasever
This will be replaced with the value of the version of the
package listed in distroverpkg. This defaults to the version of
‘redhat-release’ package.
$arch This will be replaced with your architecture as listed by
os.uname()[4] in Python.
$basearch
This will be replaced with your base architecture as listed in
archwork.py in yum. For example, if your $arch is i686 your
$basearch will be i386.
$YUM0-$YUM9
These will be replaced with the value of the shell environment
variable of the same name. If the shell environment variable
does not exist then the configuration file variable will not be
replaced.
FILES
/etc/yum.conf
/etc/yum.repos.d/
/etc/yum/pluginconf.d/
SEE ALSO
yum(8)
Seth Vidal yum.conf(5)
