Yum Commands

Common YUM commands for querying software repositories for package information and availability, installation or removal.

Applicable to Centos Versions:

Centos 5.x
Centos 6.x

Requirements

Explanation of requirements.

An Official Centos install
Working RPM and Yum

Yum Commands (Yellowdog Update Manager)

Here are a few of the most used yum commands:

Display your currently installed software repositories enabled or disabled and the status of each:

yum repolist all

Search the currently enabled repos for a specific string (in this case we’re wondering what php packages are available):

yum search */php
yum list php*

Find out what package a particular file belongs to:

yum provides /usr/bin/ssh

Find useful information about a package:

yum info openssh

Find the dependencies of a specific package:

yum deplist ImageMagick

List the software groups available for install:

yum grouplist

Install a specific group of packages:

yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"

Install an RPM downloaded elsewhere using yum to solve dependencies:

yum localinstall package.rpm 
(note: this command assumes you are in the same directory as package.rpm)

Install a package with yum:

yum install php-mysql

Remove a package with yum:

yum remove php-mysql 
(note: removing a package will also remove its dependencies but not dependencies that are orphaned.)

Clean out the yum cache of headers, metadata, downloaded packages, etc (man yum for more info):

yum clean all

Perform a system-wide update on all packages, including the kernel (note: kernel updates require a reboot to use the new kernel):

yum update

Useful Yum plugins:

To get a description of the function of each plugin and a description of what each plugin is capable of here is an example command: yum info yum-fastestmirror or yum --enablerepo=epel info yumex or yum --enablerepo=rpmforge info yumex

yum
yum-aliases
yum-allowdowngrade
yum-arch
yum-basearchonly
yum-changelog
yum-cron
yum-downloadonly
yumex.noarch
yum-fastestmirror
yum-filter-data
yumi.noarch
yum-kernel-module
yum-kmod
yum-list-data
yum-merge-conf
yum-metadata-parser
yum-priorities
yum-protectbase
yum-protect-packages
yum-refresh-updatesd
yum-security
yum-skip-broken
yum-tsflags
yum-updateonboot
yum-updatesd
yum-upgrade-helper
yum-utils
yum-versionlock

Common Problems & Fixes

Description of common problems here, including links to known common problems if located on another site.

http://wiki.centos.org

More Information

Any additional information or notes.

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #centoshelp on irc.freenode.net