My system:
Oracle Redhat 5.5

cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.18-194.el5xen (mockbuild@ca-build10.us.oracle.com) (gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-48)) #1 SMP Mon Mar 29 22:22:00 EDT 2010

I’m trying to get yum to work.
I tried your command.

yum -v install yum-downloadonly

Loading “security” plugin
Config time: 0.040
Yum Version: 3.2.22
Setting up Package Sacks
rpmdb time: 0.000
Setting up Install Process
Setting up Package Sacks
Checking for virtual provide or file-provide for yum-downloadonly
Searching pkgSack for dep: yum-downloadonly
Setting up Package Sacks
No package yum-downloadonly available.
Setting up Package Sacks
Nothing to do

Is there some kind of configuration I need to do first?

If so, what is a link explaining this?

Thanks a lot!

yum check-update | egrep ‘(base|updates)’ | awk ‘{ print $1 }’ | xargs -n 10 yumdownloader

First downloaded RPM updates on a RHN registered machine in the following way,
1) yum install yum-downloadonly // installed yum download only plugin
//Downloaded availbale RPM updates to the /root/RPM_Updates/downloads directory
2) yum update -y –downloadonly –downloaddir=/root/RPM_Updates/downloads
3) Packaged these downloads into a tar file and transferred them to the offline machine.

On a offline machine, I created a local repository of downloaded RPMs and installed them using yum update command. in the following way,
1) Untar’ed RPM updates to the “/root/RPM_Updates/downloads” directory
2) Created rhel_local.repo file with the following content and copied it into /etc/yum.repos.d directory,

[rhel-local]
name=rhel-local $releaseserver $basearch – rhel-local
baseurl=file:///root/RPM_Updates/downloads
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

3) Installed createrepo rpm using Yum localinstall command.
yum localinstall createrepo-0.4.11-3.el5.noarch.rpm # Before executing this command, This RPM was downloaded from the RHN connected machine and copied to this offline machine.
4) createrepo /root/RPM_Updates/downloads # Created local repository with this command.
5) Yum update -y # Hurrah I succefully installed RPM updates now from the local repository with out any need of registering the machine with RHN. Ofcourse, I downloded these updated RPMs from the official RHN registered machine :)

I understand that “rpm -Uvh” can update installed packages but it can not resolve dependencies on its own. Ok, let me put my question this way,
why “yum localupdate * ” command on RHN connected machine is resolving dependencies on its own ? and why not the same command on an offline machine can not resolve all dependencies though all dependent packages are in the same local directory ?
My intention here is, do not resolve any dependency issues manually on an offline machine. localupdate by name it should behave similar on a RHN connected machine as well as on an offline machine.

Correct me if I am missing anything during packaging and extracting on an offline machine.
I downloaded all updates using ” yum update -y –downloadonly –downloaddir=/tmp ” and copied all these files to offline machine and ran “yum localupdate * ” command.

Thanks,
Sandy

I copied these downloaded files to RHEL5.5 machine.(which can not be kept under network due to security reasons)
Now, I need to do offline install/update of the downloaded packages on this machine.But failed to do this. Any suggestions ?
I used “yum localupdate *” command to perform this operation.

One strange fact is, yum localupdate command is resolving dependancies when connected to RHN. But, on a offline machine even though I have copied all dependant packages it is not resolving dependencies(For Ex., to update an already installed package it is unable to install a new package available in the same directory).

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Sandy

Its great tool….I did the following steps to download CPP rpms

yum install yum-downloadonly

yumdownloader gcc

Jai.

a quick followup, I wanted to download a copy of the package rpm that I already have installed, so I did a

yum reinstall –downloadonly –downloaddir=/home/bob package-1.3-7

but if you want to download a copy of a package older then you have then

yum downgrade –downloadonly –downloaddir=/home/bob package-1.3-1

so obvious so simple. there are thousands of posts on the internet that say you can't force install using yum if you already have the package installed, yet your needled in the haystack post, proves them all wrong.

this worked for me. i accidently erased 1 file from a package. i just need to put that one file back, so i used the reinstall option, and the download only option, and then extracted the rpm package, and placed that one single file back. brilliant.

thanks!!!!!

Thanks for the heads up. The faq has been updated.