RHEL 5 Yum Repository from DVD

Question

I have a Red Hat 5 system installed from a Official DVD.

At times, I need to install packages from the DVD at a later stage. Whenever I need to do that, I have install RPMs one at a time through a painful process of dependency resolution.

Question:

How does one configure YUM so that i can conveniently install packages from the DVD.

Notes:

• there is createrepo but I can't get group information for multiple folder along with it, say, for group installing Development Tools
• online CentOS repositories are no good as our corporate proxy blocks access to some essential files fetched during an update.

Answer 1

This page explains how to set up a repository from a DVD/CD or ISO.

This page explains how to set up an mrepo repository, it seems that it will generate a comps.xml file which you will need to do groupinstalls. Perhaps that does what you need?

Answer 2

After some digging I've found there are two convenient ways of doing this:

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Method 1:
For single repositories, the best way to go about it is to use this command:

system-cdinstall-helper
provides a graphical interface for installing packages from the yum repository located at URL.

This method only allows for installing packages from a single repository.

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Method 2:
For adding multiple repositories, the way to go about it is to add the URL of the repository in Add/Remove Software.

Both methods automatically pick up all group information in the repositories. One can locate repositories by looking for a folder named repodata in its root, this directory holds all the metadata for the repository.