RPM Repositories

Triggering RPM Metadata Updates

When enabled, the metadata calculation is triggered automatically by some actions, and can also be invoked manually by others. Either way, the metadata produced is served to YUM clients.

Automatic

RPM metadata is automatically calculated:

1. When deploying, removing, copying, and moving an RPM file.
2. When performing content import (both system and repository imports).

Manual 

You can manually invoke RPM metadata calculation:

1. By selecting the local repository in the Tree Browser and clicking Recalculate Index in the Actions menu.
2. Via Artifactory's REST API.

Indexing the File List 

The filelists.xml metadata file of an RPM repository contains a list of all the files in each package hosted in the repository. When the repository contains many packages, reindexing this file as a result of interactions with the YUM client can be resource intensive causing a degradation of performance. Therefore, from version 5.4, reindexing this file is initially disabled when an RPM repository is created. To enable indexing filelists.xml, set the Enable File List Indexing checkbox. 

Note that the filelists.xml metadata file for a virtual repository may not be complete (i.e. it may not actually list all the files it aggregates) if any of the repositories it aggregates do not have file listing enabled. Note that if indexing of the filelists.xml file is disabled, it is not possible to search for a file using the YUM client to determine which package wrote the queried file to the filesystem.

Configuration

To create an RPM local repository, in the Administration module go to Repositories | Repositories | Local, click New Local Repository and select RPM as the Package Type.

Local Repositories

To enable automatic RPM metadata calculation on a local RPM repository, in the RPM Settings section of the Basic settings screen, set Auto-calculate RPM Metadata.

REPO_ROOT/$ARTIFACT_NAME/$ARTIFACT_VERSION/$ARCHITECTURE/FILE_NAME
- or -
rpm-local/foo/1.0/x64/foo-1.0-x64.rpmm

Remote Repositories

Artifactory remote repositories support RPMs out-of-the-box, and there no need for any special configuration needed in order to work with RPMs in a remote repository.

All you need to do is point your YUM client at the remote repository, and you are ready to use YUM with Artifactory.

To define a remote repository to proxy an RPM remote repository, follow the steps below:

1. In the Administration module under Repositories | Repositories | Remote, click New Remote Repository to create a new remote repository.
2. Set the Repository Key value, and specify the URL to the remote repository in the URL field as displayed below.
   
3. Click Save & Finish.
4. Back in the Application | Artifactory | Artifacts module, in the Tree Browser, select the repository. Note that in the Tree Browser, the repository name is appended with -cache.
5. Click Set Me Up and copy the value of the baseurl tag.
   
   
   

6. Next, create the /etc/yum.repos.d/targetCentos.repo file and paste the following configuration into it: 

   [targetCentos]
   name=targetCentos
   baseurl=http://localhost:8081/artifactory/targetCentos/
   enabled=1
   gpgcheck=0

Virtual Repositories

A Virtual Repository defined in Artifactory aggregates packages from both local and remote repositories.
This allows you to access both locally hosted RPM packages and remote proxied RPM repositories from a single URL defined for the virtual repository.
To define a virtual YUM repository, from the Administration module, go to Repositories | Repositories | Virtual, set the Package Type to be RPM, and select the underlying local and remote RPM repositories to include in the Basic settings tab.

To allow deploying packages to this repository, set the Default Deployment Repository.

Signing RPM Metadata 

Artifactory supports using a GPG key to sign RPM metadata for authentication by the YUM client.

To generate a pair of GPG keys and upload them to Artifactory, see Managing Signing Keys.

Installing RPM Packages Using Yum

After configuring the rpm-local repository in Artifactory, you need to configure your local machine to install software packages from it by executing the following steps:

1. Edit the artifactory.repo file with root privileges

   sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/artifactory.repo

2. Paste the following configuration into the artifactory.repo file:

   [Artifactory]
   name=Artifactory
   baseurl=http://localhost:8081/artifactory/rpm-local/
   enabled=1
   gpgcheck=0

Now, every RPM file deployed to the root of the rpm-local repository can be installed using:

yum install <package_name>

Deploying RPM Packages

Once you have configured your local machine to install RPM packages from your RPM local repository, you may also deploy RPM packages to the same repository using the UI or using the REST API. 

Through the REST API you also have the option to deploy by checksum or deploying from an archive.   

For example, to deploy an RPM package into a repository called rpm-local you could use the following:

curl -u<USERNAME>:<PASSWORD> -XPUT http://localhost:8080/artifactory/rpm-local/<PATH_TO_METADATA_ROOT> -T <TARGET_FILE_PATH>

where PATH_TO_METADATA_ROOT specifies the path from the repository root to the deploy folder.

Deploying RPM Modules to Your Local Repository

You can deploy RPM modules to the repodata folder using the modules.yaml file which contains all the desired modules and then proceed to trigger a repository index to update the repomd.xml and other metadata files with the modules information.

1. You can perform the upload directly in the JFrog Platform UI or using the following command.

   curl -u <USERNAME>:<PASSWORD> -XPUT "http://localhost:8081/artifactory/rpm-local/<PATH_TO_REPODATA_FOLDER>/modules.yaml -T <TARGET_MODULES_FILE_PATH>"

2. Trigger the reindex by running the Calculate YUM Repository Metadata API.

YUM Groups

A YUM group is a set of RPM packages collected together for a specific purpose. For example, you might collect a set of "Development Tools” together as a YUM group. 

A group is specified by adding a group XML file to same directory as the RPM packages included in it. The group file contains the metadata of the group including pointers to all the RPM files that make up the group.

Artifactory supports attaching a YUM Group file to the YUM calculation essentially mimicking the createrepo -g command.

A group file can also be created by running the following command:

sudo yum-groups-manager -n "My Group" --id=mygroup --save=mygroups.xml --mandatory yum glibc rpm

Attaching a YUM Group

The process of attaching YUM group metadata to a local repository is simple:

1. Create an XML file in the groups format used by YUM. You can either just type it out manually using any text editor, or run the yum-groups-manager command from yum-utils.
2. Deploy the created group file to the repodata folder. 
   Artifactory will automatically perform the following steps:
   • Create the corresponding .gz file and deploy it next to the deployed group XML file.
   • Invoke a YUM calculation on the local repository. 
   • Attach the group information (both the XML and the .gz file) to the repomd.xml file.
3. Make sure the group file names are listed in the YUM Group File Names field under the Basic tab of the repository configuration. This tells Artifactory which files should be attached as repository group information.

YUM Group Commands

The following table lists some useful YUM group commands:

Setting Group Properties

YUM group properties can be set  in the /etc/yum.config file as follows:

Yum Authentication

Proxy Server Settings

If your organization uses a proxy server as an intermediary for Internet access, specify the proxy settings in /etc/yum.conf. If the proxy server also requires authentication, you also need to specify the proxy_username, and proxy_password settings.

proxy=<proxy server url> 
proxy_username=<user>
proxy_password=pass 

If you use the yum plugin (yum-rhn-plugin) to access the ULN, specify the enableProxy and httpProxy settings in /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date. In addition, If the proxy server requires authentication, you also need to specify the enableProxyAuth, proxyUser, and proxyPassword settings as shown below.

enableProxy=1
httpProxy=<proxy server url> 
enableProxyAuth=1
proxyUser=<user>
proxyPassword=<password>

SSL Setting

YUM supports SSL from version 3.2.27. 

To secure a repository with SSL, execute the following steps:

• Generate a private key and certificate using  OpenSSL.

• Define your protected repository in a .repo file as follows:

  [protected]
  name = SSL protected repository
  baseurl=<secure repo url>
  enabled=1
  gpgcheck=1
  gpgKey=<URL to public key>
  sslverify=1
  sslclientcert=<path to .cert file>
  sslclientkey=<path to .key file>

  where:
  gpgkey is a URL pointing to the ASCII-armored GPG key file for the repository . This option is used if YUM needs a public key to verify a package and the required key has not been imported into the RPM database. 
  If this option is set, YUM will automatically import the key from the specific URL. You will be prompted before the key is installed unless the assumeyes option is set.

Using Yum Variables

You can use and reference the following built-in variables in yum commands and in all YUM configuration files (i.e. /etc/yum.conf and all .repo files in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory):

The following code block is an example of how your /etc/yum.conf file might look:

[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum/$basearch/$releasever
keepcache=0
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
exactarch=1
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=1
plugins=1
installonly_limit=3
[comments abridged]

Viewing Individual RPM Information

You can view all the metadata that annotates an RPM by choosing it in Artifactory's tree browser and selecting the RPM Info tab:

Metadata Fields as Properties

The corresponding RPM metadata fields are automatically added as properties of an RPM artifact in YUM repositories accessed through Artifactory:

• rpm.metadata.name

• rpm.metadata.arch

• rpm.metadata.version

• rpm.metadata.release

• rpm.metadata.epoch

• rpm.metadata.group

• rpm.metadata.vendor

• rpm.metadata.summary

Properties can be used for searching and other functions. For more details see Property Sets.

Watch the Screencast

Watch this short screencast to learn how easy it is to host RPMs in Artifactory.