Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed

Retrieving Software from RHN with YUM 87. Ability to specify particular software versions or architectures. Software locationsaccessible by YUM can contain multiple versions of the same RPM package anddifferent builds for different architectures such as one for i686 and one for x86_64.When performing software management actions, optionally, a certain version orbuild for a certain architecture can be requested.YUM downloads software from repositories located over the network, either on the localnetwork or over the Internet. The files, including the RPM package files, in these repositoriesare organized in a specific way so that they can be found by the YUM client.For Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the repository is Red Hat Network. After registering thesystem with RHN, the system is configured to use the RHN repository, so no furtherconfiguration is required.3Because the RPM database has to be manipulated and most packages require files to beinstalled in locations only available to root, most of the yum commands must be run asthe root user.Managing Software with YUMThis section discusses common actions performed with YUM, using both the commandline and graphical versions.The first time YUM is run as the root user to connect to the RHN repository, whether it isrun from the command line or a graphical application, the package headers are downloadedand stored in cache. On all subsequent connections to RHN, only changes topackage headers are downloaded to cache.Installing SoftwareInstalling a software package is pretty straightforward:yum install Replace with the name of one or more packages. If more than one package isgiven, separate them with spaces. If just the package name such as nfs-utils is given, thelatest version of the package build for the architecture of the system is installed. Tospecify a particular version of a package:yum install -To specify a particular architecture for the package to be installed:yum install .archThese can even be combined. For example, the following installs version 2.3.4-1 of theexample package for the x86_64 architecture:yum install example-2.3.4-1.x86_64