1.3.2. Setting [repository] Options

You can define individual Yum repositories by adding [repository] sections (where repository is a unique repository ID, such as [my_personal_repo]) to /etc/yum.conf or to .repo files in the /etc/yum.repos.d/directory. All .repo files in /etc/yum.repos.d/are read by yum; best practice is to define your repositories here instead of in /etc/yum.conf. You can create new, custom .repo files in this directory, add [repository] sections to those files, and the next time you run a yum command, it will take all newly-added repositories into account.

Here is a (bare-minimum) example of the form a .repo file should take:

[repository_ID]
name=A Repository Name
baseurl=http://path/to/repo or ftp://path/to/repo or file://path/to/local/repo

Every [repository] section must contain the following minimum parts:

[repository_ID]

The repository ID is a unique, one-word (no spaces; underscores are allowed) string of characters (enclosed by brackets) that serves as a repository identifier.

name=<My Repository Name>

This is a human-readable string describing the repository.

baseurl=http://path/to/repo, ftp://path/to/repo, file://path/to/local/repo

This is a URL to the directory where the repodata directory of a repository is located. Usually this URL is an HTTP link, such as:

baseurl=http://path/to/repo/releases/$releasever/server/$basearch/os/

Yum always expands the $releasever, $arch and $basearch variables in URLs. See the following section for explanations of all Yum variables: Section 1.3.3, “Using Yum Variables”.

If the repository is available over FTP, use: ftp://path/to/repo
If the repository is local to the machine, use file://path/to/local/repo
If a specific online repository requires basic HTTP authentication, you can specify your username and password in the baseurl= line by prepending it as username:password@link. For example, if a repository on http://www.example.com/repo/ requires a username of "user" and a password of "password", then the baseurl link can be specified as baseurl=http://user:password@www.example.com/repo/

Here are some other useful-but-optional [repository] options:

enabled=<1 or 0>: Setting enabled=0 instructs yum not to include that repository as a package source when performing updates and installs. This is an easy way of quickly turning repositories on and off, which is useful when you desire a single package from a repository that you do not want to enable for updates, etc. Turning repositories on and off can also be performed quickly by passing either the --enablerepo=<repo_name> or --disablerepo=<repo_name> option to yum, or easily through PackageKit's Add/Remove Software window. For the latter, refer to Section 2.2.1, “Refreshing Software Sources (Yum Repositories)”.

Many more [repository] options exist. Refer to the [repository] OPTIONS section of man yum.conf for the exhaustive list.