createrepo

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Module Description - What the module does and why it is useful
3. Setup - The basics of getting started with createrepo
   • What createrepo affects
   • Setup requirements
   • Beginning with createrepo
4. Usage - Configuration options and additional functionality
   • Regarding checksums
5. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
7. Development - Guide for contributing to the module
   • Running tests
8. Issues

Overview

The createrepo module allows you to create and update yum repositories.

Breaking changes: Version 3.0.0 changes the enable_cron setting. If set to false the cron job will not be created and an update will not be performed on agent runs. An option to update on agent runs enable_update is introduced to re-enable this functionality. If you were setting enable_cron to false then you need to set enable_update to true to maintain the same functionality.

Module Description

Yum repositories are a distribution method for RPM packages usually served via HTTP. The createrepo module creates yum repositories and it's metadata caches. It also provides mechanisms to update the repositories with an optional cron job and an update script, which is useful for post hooks in CI environments.

It does not manage the directory tree up to the root of the repository and does neither make any attempt to manage a HTTP server for repository clients.

Setup

What createrepo affects

• repository and cache directories
• createrepo package
• cron jobs for repo updates (optional)
• an update script, placed in /usr/local/bin by default

Beginning with createrepo

Basic example:

    createrepo { 'yumrepo':
        repository_dir => '/var/yumrepos/yumrepo',
        repo_cache_dir => '/var/cache/yumrepos/yumrepo'
    }

Usage

The module provides a single define so as many repositories can be created as needed, usually at least stable and testing repos are created.

Regarding checksums

Older versions of yum do not support some later default checksum types. From the createrepo man page:

Choose  the  checksum  type used in repomd.xml and for packages in the metadata.  The default is now
"sha256" (if python has hashlib). The older default was "sha", which is actually "sha1", however explicitly
using "sha1" doesn’t work on older (3.0.x) versions of yum, you need to specify "sha".

createrepo provides a checksum_type parameter to change the checksum type.

Parameters

repository_dir

The path to the base directory of the repository. Here, or in subdirectories you store the .rpm files

• Default: /var/yumrepos/${name}

repo_cache_dir

Path to a checksum directory. Makes updates to repository much faster.

• Default: /var/cache/yumrepos/${name}

repo_owner

Owner of the repository directory.

• Default: root

repo_group

Group of the repository directory.

• Default: root

repo_mode

Mode of the repository directory.

• Default: '0775'

repo_recurse

Enable recursive managing of the repository directory.

• Default: false

repo_ignore

Ignore-list for recursive managing of the repository directory.

• Default: undef

repo_seltype

Set the SELinux type for the repository directory.

• Default: httpd_sys_content_t

enable_cron

Enable regular repository updates via cron.

• Default: true

enable_update

Enable automatic repository updates during the puppet run.

• Default: false

cron_minute

Minute parameter for cron metadata update job.

• Default: */10

cron_hour

Hour parameter for cron metadata update job.

• Default: *

changelog_limit

Number of changelog entries to import into metadata.

• Default: 5

checksum_type

Sets the checksum type for repomd.xml. This needs to be set to sha if createrepo is defined on a RHEL/CentOS 6 host and is accessed by RHEL/CentOS 5 or earlier clients.

• Default: undef

update_file_path

Location of the repository update script file.

• Default: /usr/local/bin/createrepo-update-${name}

suppress_cron_stdout

Redirect stdout output from cron to /dev/null.

• Default: false

suppress_cron_stderr

Redirect stderr output from cron to /dev/null.

• Default: false

workers

Number of workers to spawn to read RPMs.

• Default: undef

groupfile

Yum repository groupfile. Creates the repository metadata with supplied group information.

• Default: undef

timeout

Exec timeout for createrepo commands. Can be useful when repositories are huge. Can even be set to 0 to disable timeouts.

• Default: 300

manage_repo_dirs

Manage the repository directory. If false the repository and cache directories must be created manually/externally.

• Default: true

cleanup

Should the cron/script clean up old rpm versions for each rpm?

• Default: false

cleanup_keep

Set how many versions of each rpm to keep.

• Default: 2

use_lockfile

Prevents corruption of the repodata, when multiple createrepo processes start building repodata at the same time. (eg in combination with incrond)

• Default: false

lockfile

full path/name of the lockfile

• Default: /tmp/createrepo-update-${name}.lock

createrepo_package

Name of the createrepo package and command to use. Can be used to use /usr/bin/createrepo_c instead of /usr/bin/createrepo.

• Default: createrepo

createrepo_cmd

The path of the createrepo binary to use. Allows, combined with setting createrepo_package, to select /usr/bin/createrepo_c instead of /usr/bin/createrepo.

• Default: /usr/bin/createrepo

Reference

See Usage

Limitations

createrepo is rspec tested on Puppet 3.8-4.x latest and beaker tested on CentOS 6, 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 with Puppet latest.

Development

1. Fork the repo.

2. Run the tests. We only take pull requests with passing tests, and it's great to know that you have a clean slate

3. Add a test for your change. Only refactoring and documentation changes require no new tests. If you are adding functionality or fixing a bug, please add a test.

4. Make the test pass.

5. Push to your fork and submit a pull request.

Running tests

This project contains tests for both rspec-puppet and beaker-rspec to verify functionality. For in-depth information please see their respective documentation.

Quickstart:

gem install bundler
bundle install
bundle exec rake spec
bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance
BEAKER_debug=yes bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance
BEAKER_set=centos-70-x64 bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance
BEAKER_set=debian-78-x64 bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance

Issues

Please log tickets and issues in the createrepo GitHub issue tracker