Using a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation DVD as a Software Repository

April 13, 2016 Ricky Adams

To use a Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation DVD as a software repository, either in the form of a physical disc, or in the form of an ISO image file.

If you are using a physical DVD, insert the disc into your computer.
If you are not already root, switch users to the root account:
```
su -
```
Create a mount point for the repository:
```
mkdir -p /path/to/repo
```
where /path/to/repo is a location for the repository, for example, /mnt/repo
Mount the DVD on the mount point that you just created. If you are using a physical disc, you need to know the device name of your DVD drive. You can find the names of any CD or DVD drives on your system with the command cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info. The first CD or DVD drive on the system is typically named sr0. When you know the device name, mount the DVD:
```
mount -r -t iso9660 /dev/device_name /path/to/repo
```
For example: mount -r -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /mnt/repo

If you are using an ISO image file of a disc, mount the image file like this:
```
mount -r -t iso9660 -o loop /path/to/image/file.iso /path/to/repo
```
For example: mount -r -o loop /home/root/Downloads/RHEL6-Server-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/repo

Note that you can only mount an image file if the storage device that holds the image file is itself mounted. For example, if the image file is stored on a hard drive that it not mounted automatically when the system boots, you must mount the hard drive before you mount an image file stored on that hard drive. Consider a hard drive named /dev/sdb that is not automatically mounted at boot time and which has an image file stored in a directory named Downloads on its first partition:
```
mkdir /mnt/temp
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/temp
mkdir /mnt/repo
mount -r -t iso9660 -o loop mount -r -o loop /mnt/temp/Downloads/RHEL6-Server-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/repo
```
If you are not sure whether a storage device is mounted, run the mount command to obtain a list of current mounts. If you are not sure of the device name or partition number of a storage device, run fdisk -l and try to identify it in the output.
Create a new repo file in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. The name of the file is not important, as long as it ends in .repo. For example, dvd.repo is an obvious choice.
1. Choose a name for the repo file and open it as a new file with the vi text editor. For example:
```
vi /etc/yum.repos.d/dvd.repo
```
2. Press the I key to enter insert mode.
3. Supply the details of the repository. For example:
```
[dvd]
baseurl=file:///mnt/repo/Server
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release
```
  The name of the repository is specified in square brackets — in this example, [dvd]. The name is not important, but you should choose something that is meaningful and recognizable.
  
  The line that specifies the baseurl should contain the path to the mount point that you created previously, suffixed with /Server for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server installation DVD, or with /Client for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux client installation DVD.
4. Press the Esc key to exit insert mode.
5. Type :wq and press the Enter key to save the file and exit the vi text editor.
6. After installing or upgrading software from the DVD, delete the repo file that you created.