[SOLVED] repositories on rhel5

[mazer]

Hi all,
I would like to use priority protections for my rhel5 repositories. However, there
are no repo files for the rhn-repositories in the yum.repos.d directory and therefore,
I cannot add the priority command to the repo file. How do I do that and how does
rhel know where the base repositories are?
Thanks a lot for your help,
Mazer

[mazer]

Hi all,
just wanted to let you know about my experience with Dell/RedHat support. I am now spending almost two days trying to figure out this problem about the RedHat repositories and how you can protect them so that software from these repositories is not overwritten by software from 3rd party repositories. I have a dell workstation and bought RHEL 5.3 with it. I have called RH for support. The only help I have received from them was that I have to call Dell for software support. Dell on the other hand tells me I have to call RH. There is no way that anybody is helping you. This is so rediculous. I thought that RH wants to make business with their operating system. But I have the feeling either they have to much money or they are very bad in making business. I would not recommend anybody to buy a computer preinstalled with RH. They will not support you. And if you want a RH based Linux than go for CentOS. At least that has a straight forward way of protecting your repositories using priorities and it is FREE!!!
Cheers,
Mazer

[glennzo]

Have a look at the yum-protectbase plugin.

[mazer]

Have a look at the yum-protectbase plugin.

I did but it did not work out. I have goolged and there are many different versions how do it. But somehow nothing works. RedHat writes on their page that rhn-plugin should understand protectbase now (for version 5.3) but I do not think so. In my case it does not work.
Thanks,
Mazer

[mazer]

I have figured it out now. Guess I did not really understand how protectbase works. If anybody has similar problems, here is how I did it:

First of all, you have to find out what the names of the rhn repositories are.
"yum repolist" will give you this information. However, if the repo name is to long, you will not get the complete name. In my case "yum repolist" gives me:
-----
Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
repo id repo name status
rhel-x86_64-client-5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 f enabled : 5,171
rhel-x86_64-client-w RHEL Desktop Workstation (v. 5 for 64-bi enabled : 2,915
repolist: 8,086
-----
The repo id is what you need. As for example, "rhel-x86_64-client-5" is a complete name for a rhn repo. "rhel-x86_64-client-w" however is not a complete name and if you type "yum clean all" and "yum check-update" the
entire repo names are diplayed. The real name for "rhel-x86_64-client-w" is for example "rhel-x86_64-client-workstation-5".

These names (real ones) have to be added to the file "/etc/yum/pluginconf.d/rhnplugin.conf" as follows:
-----
[rhel-x86_64-client-5]
enabled = 1
protect = 1

[rhel-x86_64-client-workstation-5]
enabled = 1
protect = 1
-----

This should do the trick and protect your rhn base from being overwritten by packages from other repositories.
Cheers,
Mazer