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mrepo: RPM Repository Mirroring

Today I have finally found some time to catch up on my blogging. I’ve got a whole slew of backlogged information that I want to post, so hopefully my fingers (and my brain!) can keep up long enough to get it all published. The topic I wanted to start with today is mrepo: RPM Repository Mirroring made easy. Mrepo is a tool developed by Dag Wieers of rpmforge fame. If you’ve ever run an RPM based distribution (Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, etc) you’ve very likely heard of Dag Wieers. He keeps the package machine running and provides those packages not otherwise available in the core repositories. I read that he developed this tool to help streamline the creation and deployment of RPM mirrors and network install servers, which he so often needed in dealing with clients. I used this exact setup to create and maintain an internal repository for our company which supplies network-based installation capabilities for Red Hat Enterprise 3, 4 and 5, CentOS 3, 4 and 5, Fedora 10 and 11, and openSUSE. Read more

Find Out When an RPM Was Installed

Just the other day we were auditing some of the packages on our production application servers and found a few that we were surprised about. None of us remember installing them, so we set out to try and find out who might have done it, and when it might have happened. The other two admins started grepping through the history files and looking at old, archived log data. I used the information within the RPM database and simply asked the machine when it was installed: <br /> [root@repo ~]# rpm -qi htop<br /> Name : htop Relocations: (not relocatable)<br /> Version : 0.7 Vendor: Dag Apt Repository, http://dag.wieers.com/apt/<br /> Release : 1.el5.rf Build Date: Sat 24 Nov 2007 07:24:19 AM MST<br /> Install Date: Tue 04 Nov 2008 04:02:40 PM MST Build Host: lisse.leuven.wieers.com<br /> Group : Applications/System Source RPM: htop-0.7-1.el5.rf.src.rpm<br /> Size : 148330 License: GPL<br /> Signature : DSA/SHA1, Sat 24 Nov 2007 07:29:40 AM MST, Key ID a20e52146b8d79e6<br /> Packager : Dag Wieers <dag@wieers. Read more