RHEL7 Beta Discussions?

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I didn’t have such a thing on the RHEL7 beta VM I set up, nor on the RHEL7 RC I just set up. /etc/yum.repos.d was empty on both machines after installation, and “yum repolist all” reports “repolist: 0”.

Perhaps it only appears if you attach a RHN subscription to the machine?

Digimer’s DVD repo method misses out on a lot of packages since the ISO
files don’t include the “optional” package set. A big chunk of these are things like -devel packages corresponding to library packages, so if you’re a software developer, the DVD/ISO contents are likely to be insufficient.

My method:

1. Mount the ISO or DVD on the machine, find the Packages directory, and copy it into /var/www/html/rhel7rc on one of the LAN’s web servers.

(Putting it on a separate web server allows the repo to have a lifetime independent of the RHEL7 test system, and also allows you to share the repo among multiple test systems.)

2. From /var/www/html/rhel7rc on the web server, say:

rsync -rv rsync://ftp.redhat.com/redhat/rhel/rc/7/Server-optional/x86_64/os/Packages .

This step downloads another ~2.1 GB of RPMs beyond what came on the installation DVD, merging thousands more RPMs into the set you copied from the DVD/ISO.

Substitute your OS edition for “Server” as necessary. Ditto CPU type.

3. Create the repo:

cd /var/www/html/rhel7rc
createrepo .

When this completes, “ls /var/www/html/rhel7rc” should report:

Packages repodata

If you skip this step or don’t do it right, yum won’t chase dependencies properly.

4. Create /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel7rc.repo on the RHEL7 box:

[rhel7rc]
name=RHEL7 RC local mirror
baseurl=http://rhel7rc/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release

“rhel7rc” is a CNAME or /etc/hosts alias for the web server. We need to use such an alias because the next step is:

5. Save the following as /etc/httpd/conf.d/rhel7rc.conf:


DocumentRoot /var/www/html/rhel7rc
ServerAlias rhel7rc


Allow from all
AllowOverride None
Options +Indexes
Order allow,deny

Then say “service httpd restart”.

At this point, your new local mirror of RHEL7 RC should work.

(If you’re wondering why I took the time to write all this up, it’s because I figured it out back in December when the beta came out, then forgot a bunch of details in the ~4 months it took for the RC to come out and had to rediscover a bunch of it. If nothing else, this way I’ll have a reference I can dig out of my email Sent folder the next time I
need to do this.)

13 thoughts on - RHEL7 Beta Discussions?

  • No. It has been a while but I’m pretty sure when I installed on a laptop I ended up with rhel-beta.repo and all I did was to set enabled=1 in the [rhel-beta] section to be able to install additional packages. Yum complains that the system is ‘not registered’ if I try to update (and there aren’t any updates), but installing packages works.

    That repo file came from this package:
    yum info redhat-release-everything Loaded plugins: langpacks, product-id, subscription-manager This system is not registered to Red Hat Subscription Management. You can use subscription-manager to register. Installed Packages Name : redhat-release-everything Arch : x86_64
    Version : 7.0
    Release : 0.6.el7
    Size : 38 k Repo : installed Summary : Red Hat Enterprise Linux Everything release file License : GPLv2
    Description : Red Hat Enterprise Linux Everything release files

  • I just reinstalled my RHEL7 RC test VM, and it still doesn’t have any repositories configured.

    The corresponding package in my VM is redhat-release-server:

    $ rpm -ql redhat-release-server | grep -c repos
    0

    (The “everything” ISO isn’t being offered for the RC, apparently.)

  • That should be ServerName, so that Apache serves from the rhel7rc directory only if you call it as “rhel7rc”. With the alias alone, this can takes over all port 80 serving. (Depends on the order the *.conf files are loaded.)

  • This one might be more of a GNOME3 question. I’m running the RHEL7
    beta on a laptop where I used to run windows xp. It’s a Dell Latitude w/docking station and the dock has a coax/digital sound output. On windows, it would automatically switch to the analog headphone jack if I plugged headphones in. With linux there is a widget in the top bar on GNOME that has the volume control and a
    ‘sound settings’ option that I can open and pick digital or headphone output but it has to be done manually. Is there any way to get the windows behavior of using headphone output whenever they are plugged in?

  • While I can’t speak for RHEL7, the expected behavior is seen when using GNOME3 under Fedora.

    When I plug in my headphones to the 3.5mm jack, a small headphone icon shows up to the right of the speaker icon.

  • Running the RC now – I get the headphone icon if I am already switched to analog and the expanded sound settings window shows ‘speakers’
    before I plug in. The larger picture switches to headphones too. And if I am switched to headphones and remove the headphone jack it auto-switches to digital output (spdif). The part that still seems missing is that if it is on spdif and I plug the headphones in, nothing happens. It is sort of an odd setup where the spdif jack is in a docking station, but windows did the auto-switch both directions.

  • RHEL7 RC shows some nouveau errors at boot on a Dell D630 laptop and wants to run the 1440×900 screen at 1280×768. What’s the best approach to getting a working video driver installed?

  • ELrepo’s nvidia drivers, once they’re available for 7, if they’re not already.

  • They are not available yet.

    I aim to release them when RHEL7 is released.

    If people want to help develop them (test and feedback) then the elrepo-devel mailing list is probably the best place for that discussion.

  • The one from Nvidia built/installed OK and I’m not too concerned about future updates since I’ll reinstall when CentOS7 is released anyway. Looks much better at native resolution. But it would have been nicer if the initial RHEL install steps had actually fit on the screen instead of having to pan around to find the buttons.

  • Indeed.

    Have you filed a bug with RH. If so, please link it here so I can track it.

    Thank you.

  • No, I don’t have a login there. lspci says:
    01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G86M [Quadro NVS
    135M] (rev a1)
    and I think the 1440×900 screen might have been an upgrade option.