YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) is the
package management tool used on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its derived versions,
CentOS and
Scientific Linux. It acts as a front end to the
RPM Package Manager (RPM), and is used to install, remove, and update software on Red Hat based systems.
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I first encountered YUM when installing
Yellow Dog Linux on
PowerPC based Macintosh computers back at the dawn of the 21st century. When I switched over to
Debian based
GNU/Linux systems with the release of
Ubuntu in 2004, I completely lost touch with the RPM world until my Spring semester Linux System Administration course's pursuit of
RHCSA certification brought me back into the fold.
I am writing this post to use as a handy list of the most common things I need to do when managing software:
- Update the software on the system
$ yum check-update
$ sudo yum update package_name
$ sudo yum update [to update all packages]
$ sudo yum group update group_name
- List all the currently installed software
$ yum list installed
$ yum list installed "global expression"
- Search for available packages
$ yum list available "global expression"
$ yum search term...
- Display information about a package
$ yum info package_name
- Install a new package
$ sudo yum install package_name
- Remove an existing package
$ sudo yum remove package_name
- List the current repos
$ yum repolist
$ yum repolist -v
That covers the basics. I also need to learn how to clean up the cruft that accumulates over time as a system is run, in Debian land the kind of thing that would be done with
$ sudo apt-get autoremove. It seems that in RPM space that is accomplished with the
package-cleanup utility, so I'll look into that.
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