Installing RPMforge
RPMforge is a collaboration of Dag, Dries, and other packagers. They provide over 4000 packages for CentOS, including mplayer, xmms-mp3, and other popular media tools. It is not part of RedHat or CentOS but is designed to work with these major distributions.
Packages are supplied in RPM format and in most cases are ready to use. Beware that some packages are newer than the official CentOS version and you should not blindly install those packages. Before you replace a CentOS package you should make sure that will not break anything important. In most cases you can revert any mistakes but it is best to avoid the mess.
1. CentOS 5
If you wish use this repository, you may wish to install Priorities
Note: Please note that the upstream maintainer of yum, Seth Vidal, had the following to say about 'yum priorities' in September 2009:
> ... lead in, ending: (same way most people end up setting up 'yum-priorities' anyway) Gosh, I hope people do not set up yum priorities. There are so many things about priorities that make me cringe all over. It could just be that it reminds me of apt 'pinning' and that makes me want to hurl.
1.1. Priorities
yum-priorities is available in the CentOS 5 repositories:
yum install yum-priorities
Plugins are enabled in CentOS 5 by default.
Make sure that yum-priorities is enabled by editing the /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf file, and ensuring that it contains the following lines:
[main] enabled=1
Edit the .repo files in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and set up priorities by adding the line:
priority=N
to a repository entry, where N is an integer number from 1 to 99.
The recommended settings are:
[base], [addons], [updates], [extras] ... priority=1 [centosplus],[contrib] ... priority=2 Third Party Repos such as rpmforge ... priority=N (where N is > 10 and based on your preference)
1.2. RPMforge
Download the rpmforge-release package. Choose one of the two links below, depending on your architecture. If you are unsure of which one to use you can check your architecture with the command uname -i
i386 http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/RPMS.dag/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
x86_64 http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/x86_64/RPMS.dag/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
(You can find a complete list of rpmforge-release package packages at http://dag.wieers.com/packages/rpmforge-release/ but it is recommended that you use one of the two listed above).
Install DAG's GPG key
rpm --import http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
Verify the package you have downloaded
rpm -K rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.*.rpm
Security warning: The rpmforge-release package imports GPG keys into your RPM database. As long as you have verified the md5sum of the key injection package, and trust Dag, et al., then it should be as safe as your trust of them extends.
Install the package
rpm -i rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.*.rpm
This will add a yum repository config file and import the appropriate GPG keys. At this point, you can set the priority of the RPMForge repository, and also of the CentOS repositories if you have not done so yet.
Test with this command:
yum check-update
It should output these two lines:
Loading "priorities" plugin ... 76 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
The number above may differ, but there should be several packages shown as being excluded.
If so then it looks like things are working so try installing something like this
yum install mplayer
2. CentOS 4
As noted for CentOS 5, and with the warning in mind, you may wish to install Priorities
2.1. Priorities
Assuming you have centos extras enabled in your current yum configuration
yum install yum-plugin-priorities
Make sure that yum-priorities is enabled by editing the /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf file, and ensuring that it contains the following lines:
[main] enabled=1
Edit the .repo files in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and set up priorities by adding the line:
priority=N
to a repository entry, where N is an integer number from 1 to 99.
The recommended settings are:
[base], [addons], [update], [extras] ... priority=1 [centosplus],[contrib] ... priority=2 Third Party Repos such as rpmforge ... priority=N (where N is > 10 and based on your preference)
2.2. RPMforge
Download the rpmforge-release package. Choose one of the two links below, depending on your architecture. If you are unsure of which one to use you can check your architecture with the command uname -i
i386 http://dag.wieers.com/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el4.rf.i386.rpm
x86_64 http://dag.wieers.com/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el4.rf.x86_64.rpm
(You can find a complete list of rpmforge-release package packages at http://dag.wieers.com/packages/rpmforge-release/ but it is recommended that you use one of the two listed above).
Install DAG's GPG key
rpm --import http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
Verify the package you have downloaded
rpm -K rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el4.rf.*.rpm
Security warning: The rpmforge-release package imports GPG keys into your RPM database. As long as you have verified the md5sum of the key injection package, and trust Dag, et al., then it should be as safe as your trust of them extends.
Install the package
rpm -i rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el4.rf.*.rpm
This will add a yum repository config file and import the appropriate GPG keys. At this point, you can set the priority of the RPMForge repository, and also of the CentOS repositories if you have not done so yet.
Test with this command:
yum check-update
It should output these two lines:
Loading "priorities" plugin ... 76 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
If so then it looks like things are working so try installing something like this
yum install mplayer
Hope that it works 
3. CentOS 3
Does not have protectbase.
Does have a rpmforge-release package but you don't want it enabled; QUERY: Why? RPH
4. CentOS 2
CentOS 2 is no longer a supported CentOS release, and will silently fall victim to unpatched security matters. Please migrate off of it.
