• Install regular RHEL5
• Install mrepo and createrepo packages for “el5”
  • http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/mrepo/
  • http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/createrepo/
• If you do have access to a RHEL4 system:
  • Copy the contents from rhel4_system:/usr/share/rhn to rhel5_system:/usr/share/mrepo/rhn
• If you do not have access to a RHEL4 system:
  • Fetch the up2date RPM package from CD 2 in the RHEL4 set
    • rhel4_system# mount -oloop RHEL4-U4-i386-ES-disc2.iso /mnt
    • rhel4_system# scp /mnt/RedHat/RPMS/up2date-4.4*rpm rhel5_system:/tmp
    • rhel5_system# rpm2cpio up2date-4.4*rpm | cpio -ivmud
    • rhel5_system# mkdir -p /usr/share/mrepo/rhn ; cp -r ./usr/share/rhn/* /usr/share/mrepo/rhn/
  • Alternatively, use the tarfile mentioned on the RPM-tools mailing list
• You need to change the paths in /usr/bin/rhnget to point to the RHEL4 up2date. This can be done easily with the following command:

  sed -i s,/usr/share/rhn/,/usr/share/mrepo/rhn/,g /usr/bin/rhnget
  

Create the file /etc/mrepo.conf.d/rhel5-server.conf and configure a repository for RHEL5 i386 and x86_64:

[rhel5-server]
name = Red Hat Server $release ($arch)
release = 5
arch = i386 x86_64
metadata = repomd yum repoview

### ISO images
iso = rhel-$release-server-$arch-disc?.iso

### Additional repositories
### Your mileage may vary, depending on your entitlements
### If you try any other channel than updates, you might also need to make sure you have the proper entitlements on RHN
updates = rhns:///rhel-$arch-server-$release
#fastrack = rhns:///rhel-$arch-server-fastrack-$release
#supplementary = rhns:///rhel-$arch-server-supplementary-$release
#virtualization = rhns:///rhel-$arch-server-vt-$release
#rhn-tools = rhns:///rhn-tools-rhel-$arch-server-$release

• You need a systemid file to get access to RHN. You have three possibilities:
  • Enter your RHN username and password when running mrepo for the first time
  • or fetch a systemid file from a running server with has a RHN entitlement for the proper version and architecture and put it in /var/mrepo/rhel5-server-$arch/systemid
  • or use /usr/bin/gensystemid to create an entitlement and systemid file
• Populate your repository with the command mrepo -uvvv (u is for update, vvv is for extra verbosity)
• If you want to save some time downloading from RHN, and already have the ISOs for RHEL5, you can copy the contents of the CD /RedHat/RPMS/*.rpm to the /var/mrepo/rhel5-server-$arch/updates folder before running mrepo
• When your repository has been populated, use mrepo -gvvv to generate the yum repository structure at /var/www/mrepo

If you get an error like: rhnget: “Unknown error that needs more debugging occured with channel rhel-i386-server-5. Skipping.\n'up2date'”

Make sure /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources is not empty and has an “up2date default” line as a minimum.

# CentOS NOTE: This file is deprecated and no longer used, all system management
# is now handled via yum, look at yum's configs to manage repositories etc
#
#

up2date default

# EOF

You might have an issue with the web server not being able to show you the files in the yum repository. This is not due to a missing FollowSymlinks in your Apache config, but due to SElinux enforcements. Verify this with a peek at your Apache error log at /var/log/httpd/error.log. If it's trying to tell you that the symlinks doesn't exist, then try this:

chcon -Rh --reference /var/www/html /var/www/mrepo

This has been documented in /usr/share/doc/mrepo*/docs/selinux.txt.

You may have the CentOS5 issue reported above, and may need to generate the up2date-uuid file.

• Find unique uuid of your system:

      # uuidgen
      XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXX
      

The file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date-uuid should read:

uuid[comment]=Universally Unique ID for this server
rhnuuid=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX

• Modify /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/rhnplugin.conf and change enabled=1 to enabled=0.
• Create the file /etc/yum.repos.d/mrepo.conf and configure RHEL to update through your new yum repository:

  [rhel-debuginfo]
  name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux $releasever - $basearch - Debug
  baseurl=http://<your_mrepo_host>/mrepo/rhel-$basearch-server-$releasever
  enabled=1
  gpgcheck=1
  gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-KEY-redhat-release
  

Yum update, yum install and other yum commands should work as you should be used to now.