technical solution/workaround for EPEL vs. RH sub channel

[inode0]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 5:27 PM, BJ Dierkes
<wdierkes at 5dollarwhitebox.org> wrote:
> On Jan 18, 2010, at 1:59 PM, Christopher wrote:
>> The epel.repo file could contain something like:
>>
>> # repo file for epel
>> # If you wish to avoid conflicting with a RedHat channel you subscribe
>> # to, you can use exclude="@rh-group-foo".
>> # get get the list of groups group run
>> # yum grouplist --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo=epel
>> # or see http://some.url/EPEL
>> #
>> # warning subscribing to RH sub channels and EPEL without checking for
>> # package conflicts may kill kittens.
>>
>> [epel]
>> name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 5 - $basearch
>> #baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/$basearch
>> mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=epel-5&arch=
>> $basearch
>> failovermethod=priority
>> enabled=1
>> gpgcheck=1
>> gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL
>>
>> # exclude="@rh-group foo"
>
> Forgive me if I'm missing something, so let me summarize what I think you are referring to:
>
> RHN [Sub] Channel contains packageA, packageB, etc.
> EPEL @sub-channel group also contains packageA, packageB, etc (or packages that conflict with them)
>
>
> The gaol being to allow EPEL to offer packages that conflict with packages provided by RHEL.  Where I am not
> following is the exclude.  Wouldn't 'exclude=@rh-group' in the epel.repo config file exclude the @rh-group in
> EPEL, rather than excluding the @rh-group in RHN?

I think that would be the most desirable default configuration. Don't
step on Red Hat provided packages.

> Additionally, something I'm unsure of is.... with the rhn plugin for yum, there are no 'per repo' [read channel] repo
> configs, therefore to exclude anything from RHN you have to globally exclude in yum.conf (meaning you would
> exclude the @group from all repos/channels).  So if a sysadmin wants to exclude @group from RHN it would have
> to be a global exclude (or are you assuming that they wouldn't be subscribed to the sub-channel in RHN).
>
> As I said, forgive me if I"m missing something.

There are per repo configs now in RHEL5, I believe they were added in
5.3 or so. For example,

# cat /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/rhnplugin.conf
[main]
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 1

[rhel-i386-server-5]
enabled = 1

Other RHN channels can be configured similarly however there is not
full support for everything we are used to in yum configs here. It is
quite limited I believe and I don't know for sure what pieces actually
work.

John