To keep your system updated with the latest and greatest packages on CentOS 7, you must constantly update it. The yum update commands will fetch and download the latest updates for your system. By default, it only fetches pre-installed repositories which can be limited with fewer packages.
If you want to install and use the latest packages for your applications on CentOS 7, you’ll have to install additional third-party software repositories. Most of the latest servers and software packages are not available from the default CentOS repositories. The folks behind CentOS are pretty cautious when adding newer updates to their systems. They want to fully test out these updates before releasing them to all systems running CentOS.
Because it takes longer time to updates packages in CentOS, third-party repositories were created to fill in the gap to release updates quickly and frequently. Packages that were installed from these third-party repositories get updated and refreshed very frequently as soon as updates become available. Theses are usually tested and customized for the appropriate version of CentOS.
For example, to get the latest version of Nginx, Apache2, PHP-FPM and other important opensource packages, you must install third-party repositories. This brief tutorial is going to show you how to add these popular repositories to CentOS 7 if you haven’t already done so.
- Installing EPEL Repository for CentOS 7
EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is an opensource and free community based repository project from Fedora team which provides 100% high quality software packages for Linux distribution including RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and CentOS.
Most people who run CentOS 7 usually add these repository to their systems. To enable it in CentOS 7, run the commands below to install it.
sudo yum install epel-release
In the past, one had to add its repository and install the repository. Now all you need to do is run the yum install commands to install and enable EPEL in CentOS7.
- Installing Remi Repository on CentOS 7
The Remi repository provides newer version of popular opensource software for CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It depends on the EPEL repository so you must first install EPEL before installing Remi.
To enable Remi repository on CentOS 7, run the commands below.
cd /tmp && wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
Next, run the commands below to install it.
sudo rpm -Uvh remi-release-7*.rpm
- Installing RPMForge Repository on CentOS 7
Another useful repository for CentOS system is the RPMForge repository. It’s a community maintained repository which contains newer packages and software for CentOS and Red Hat Linux. More than 5000 individual packages are included in the repository. It’s a great repository to add to your system if you’re running CentOS or Red Hat servers.
To add it, run the commands below.
cd /tmp && wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el7.rf.x86_64.rpm
Next, run the commands below to install it
sudo rpm -Uvh rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el7.rf.x86_64.rpm
By default CentOS puts all repositories file at /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. Each of the repository file will have an extension ending in .repo. You can edit individual repository file to enable or disable it.
A simple repository file may contain something like what’s below:
[rpmforge-extras]
name = RHEL $releasever – RPMforge.net – extras
baseurl = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el7/en/$basearch/extras
mirrorlist = http://mirrorlist.repoforge.org/el7/mirrors-rpmforge-extras
#mirrorlist = file:///etc/yum.repos.d/mirrors-rpmforge-extras
enabled = 0
protect = 0
gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmforge-dag
gpgcheck = 1
You can enable or disable a repository by changing the value for enabled to 1 to enable and 0 to disable. When you’re done, save the file and exit.
Run the yum update commands to see if there are newer updates for your systems.. There may more third-party repositories, but these are the most popular.