Notification of Repo Updates

Rocky Linux General
1

I apologize if this is the wrong forum – and for sounding like a Negative Nancy. But, this is the SECOND time I have been locked out of the Repos for Rocky Linux 8.x.

I use my RL box just all happy and content, then hit a snag that I think I can solve with a new package from the repo. I do yum install <package I want> (yum is just an alias for dnf, and I’m old-school). BAM! Can’t get to the repo to get the package.

Two questions:

  1. Is there a command to update the URLs for the Repos themselves? yum (or dnf) update doesn’t do it because the repo you want to get updates from is Vaulted!

  2. Is there a non-spammy email list I can sign-up with to get notifications when Rocky Linux is about release a new minor version, vault a previous minor version, or otherwise ruin my day?

Respectfully,
Frustrated RL Lover

2

UPDATE: The Yum Manual page, states you can add the ‘releasever’ directive to the yum.conf file to override the $releasever variable set by (the kernel?). I’ll try that.

3

Could you be more specific on the issues you’re having with the repos? We have not received any reports of issues with our repos or mirror list.

  1. There isn’t, no. If you change releasever you risk being unable to update your system or use third party repos.

  2. Notifications are on the forums, reddit, twitter, mattermost and the mail lists. See here for a general schedule for releases.

4

Thank you for the reply. I am not sure how to fix my repos, besides changing releasever. Changing releasever is not a big problem since – because Rocky Linux MOVED v8.6 to the ‘Vaulted URL’ – I am already unable to update my system.

5

You shouldn’t have to set releasever for your repos to work. It is the major version of the release you are running, which dnf calculates by looking at the rpm database. If you let it be set to the default of “8” (whether you set it by yourself or let dnf calculate this itself), you will always get the latest updates we provide, including when new releases are available. This is all automatic.

[root@cm01 dnf]# grep releasever * -R
[root@cm01 dnf]# /usr/libexec/platform-python -c 'import dnf, json; db = dnf.dnf.Base(); print(json.dumps(db.conf.substitutions, indent=2))'
{
  "arch": "x86_64",
  "basearch": "x86_64",
  "releasever": "8"
}

[root@xmpp01 dnf]# grep releasever * -R
[root@xmpp01 dnf]# python3 -c 'import dnf, json; db = dnf.dnf.Base(); print(json.dumps(db.conf.substitutions, indent=2))'
{
  "arch": "x86_64",
  "basearch": "x86_64",
  "releasever": "9"
}

As for the vault, we generally move outdated and unsupported releases to the vault one to two weeks (at a minimum) after a new minor release. We only support the latest available.

6

My system’s $releasever variable is currently set to a Minor version – 8.x. How would I fix that so $releasever is just the Major version? Is that what the python code you provided does? Again, I do appreciate your assistance in helping me remedy this issue.

7

The releasever gets the Major version by default. If yours does something else, then it is due to changes that you have done. Undo those changes.

8

I have no idea how / why my releasever is set to a Minor version; therefore I have no idea how to ‘Undo the changes’. How might one MAKE such a change to the releasever in the first place?

BTW, for anyone reading this, adding a ‘releasever’ directive to yum.conf, did not change the behavior of Yum, which is still trying to pull repodata from the obsolete (pub) URL for Rocky Linux v8.6, and getting a 404 error.

UPDATE: My apologies @jlehtone, I found where I made the change; because this was the only way I could get the Repos to work after I had trouble reaching the v8.4 repos a while back -- admittedly, self-inflicted pain. 
/etc/yum.repos.d/Rocky-AppStream.repo:15:baseurl=https://dl.rockylinux.org/$contentdir/8.6/AppStream/$basearch/os/
/etc/yum.repos.d/Rocky-BaseOS.repo:15:baseurl=https://dl.rockylinux.org/$contentdir/8.6/BaseOS/$basearch/os/
/etc/yum.repos.d/Rocky-Extras.repo:15:baseurl=https://dl.rockylinux.org/$contentdir/8.6/extras/$basearch/os/

As you said, I ‘Undid the change’, and now my system can get to the repos. Thanks for your assistance.