Sync Oracle Linux yum repos from ULN or yum.oracle.com

The Dockerfile and scripts in this repo create a container image that is able to sync content from both the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and the Oracle Linux yum server to local repos with URL paths that match the ones on https://yum.oracle.com.

Build the ol-repo-sync image (optional)

To build the ol-repo-sync image, clone this repo then run:

docker build -t ol-repo-sync .

To use the local image, remove ghcr.io/djelibeybi from each of the docker run commands provided below.

Initial setup

An Oracle Linux support subscription is required to sync from ULN. If you do not have a support subscription, remove the uln array completely from the config/repos.json file.

Note that some repos are only available via ULN, including repos that contain the word patch, ksplice, JavaSE and Exadata.

For the best sync performance, add repos from the Oracle Linux yum server wherever possible, instead of the equivalent channel on ULN. The Oracle Linux yum server is cached by the Akamai CDN and generally provides a significantly greater download speed than ULN.

Register with ULN (optional)

Before content can be synced from ULN, the container has to be registered. First, create a directory named rhn then run the following command.

This command maps the rhn/ directory to /etc/sysconfig/rhn/ inside the container then automatically registers the container using the ULN credentials provided in config/uln.conf (check the section on storing ULN credentials for more detail):

docker run --rm -it \
  --name ol-repo-sync-register \
  -v "$PWD/rhn:/etc/sysconfig/rhn" \
  -v "$PWD/config:/config" \
  ghcr.io/djelibeybi/ol-repo-sync register

This will take a few minutes with no output to the terminal but should return to the command prompt when completed.

If you don't sync from ULN, remove -v "$PWD/rhn:/etc/sysconfig/rhn" \ from the command.

If you mount a local directory to /etc/sysconfig/rhn each time you start a container, you should only have to register with ULN once, as the registration details are stored inside this directory.

You can skip manual registration by running the container on an Oracle Linux host that is already registered with ULN and mounting the local /etc/sysconfig/rhn directory to the container.

Source packages are not synced by default. To include source packages, set the SYNC_SRC environment variable to 1 by passing -e SYNC_SRC=1 as an argument to docker run.

Store ULN credentials

To enable the automatic subscription and unsubscription of ULN channels, the sync process needs access to ULN credentials with permission to change channel subscriptions.

Copy config/uln.sample.conf to config/uln.conf and replace the placeholders with Oracle SSO credentials and an active CSI. To protect the content of this file, run chmod 400 config/uln.conf to prevent others from being able to see the credentials.

Update map of available repos

The config/repo-map.json file contains a map of repo ID and URL for each repo available on the Oracle public yum server with the appropriate local file system path to ensure the same path structure is maintained locally.

To create or update the config/repo-map.json file, run:

docker run --rm -it \
  --name ol-repo-sync-update \
  -v "$PWD/config:/config" \
  ghcr.io/djelibeybi/ol-repo-sync update

This should be run regularly or at least whenever a new version of Oracle Linux is released to update the config/repo-map.json file.

Configure the repos to sync

Copy config/repos.sample.json to config/repos.json and add all the repos you want to sync to either the uln or yum array.

Syncing repos

The following command will sync the content of the repos configured in config/repos.json to the $PWD/repo directory which is mounted at /repo inside the container.

docker run --rm -it \
  --name ol-repo-sync \
  -v "$PWD/rhn:/etc/sysconfig/rhn" \  # only required for ULN
  -v "$PWD/config:/config" \
  -v "$PWD/repo:/repo" \
  ghcr.io/djelibeybi/ol-repo-sync

If you are not syncing from ULN, remove -v "$PWD/rhn:/etc/sysconfig/rhn" \ from the command.

For each yum or uln source configured in config/repos.json, the sync process will:

1. Enable the repo (yum) or subscribe to the channel (uln).
2. Check if there are any new packages available in the repo
3. Download all new packages
4. Disable the repo or unsubscribe from the channel

Only one source is synced at a time. To run multiple syncs concurrently, create multiple configurations, each with a unique set of sources.

Ensuring that each sync process has a different set of sources allows you to run them in parallel, all mounting the the same local $PWD/repo directory, without worrying about conflicts or file collisions.

Configure regular updates by running the container using either cron or a systemd timer.

Accessing the synced repos

A web server is required to make the synced content available to local clients. The Dockerfile.nginx and Dockerfile.httpd images can be used to create containers running either NGINX or Apache for this purpose.

To use NGINX as the web server, run:

docker build -t ol-repo-webserver -f Dockerfile.nginx .

Or to use Apache as the web server, run:

docker build -t ol-repo-webserver -f Dockerfile.httpd .

The ghcr.io/djelibeybi/ol-repo-webserver image uses NGINX which is the recommended option.

The repo/ directory is mounted read-only into the ol-repo-webserver container. This allows the web server to continue running and serving clients while repo syncs are active.

Configuring Oracle Linux clients

The default configuration on a fresh install of Oracle Linux uses yum$ociregion.$ocidomain as the host name for each repo provided by Oracle. The values for $ociregion and $ocidomain are set via files in /etc/yum/vars.

To use these variables to point to your local repo mirror, ensure the host name for your mirror starts with yum. Then, add any host name suffix to ociregion and the domain name (and port) to /etc/yum/vars/ocidomain.

For example, if the URL for your mirror is yum-mirror.example.com:8080:

$ echo "-mirror" | tee /etc/yum/vars/ociregion
-mirror
$ echo ".example.com:8080" | tee /etc/yum/vars/ocidomain
.example.com:8080

This enables the use of the Oracle Linux release RPMs, e.g. oracle-epel-release-el8 or oraclelinux-developer-release-el8 without the need to modify individual files.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions from the community. Before submitting a pull request, please review our contribution guide.

License

Copyright (c) 2020, 2022 Avi Miller.

Released under the Universal Permissive License v1.0 as shown at https://oss.oracle.com/licenses/upl/.