yumbootstrap

yumbootstrap is a tool for installing Yum-based distributions (Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora) in a chroot directory. Idea behind it is stolen from Debian's debootstrap. It's planned for yumbootstrap to work along with templates for lxc-create.

There is another project of similar purpose called Rinse. yumbootstrap differs from Rinse as follows:

• yumbootstrap uses Yum to resolve dependencies, so adding packages to installation list is easier (no need to track dependencies manually).
• Using multiple Yum repositories for installation is supported.
• yumbootstrap checks signatures on installed RPM packages.
• yumbootstrap doesn't depend on Yum mirror to list directory contents, so it's less work to setup local mirror usable with yumbootstrap.

Examples of use

Listing available suites:

# /usr/sbin/yumbootstrap --list-suites
centos-5
centos-6
...
fedora-19
fedora-20

Installing centos-6 suite to /mnt/chroot/centos-6-chroot:

# /usr/sbin/yumbootstrap --verbose centos-6 /mnt/chroot/centos-6-chroot

Installing centos-6 suite, including some custom packages:

# /usr/sbin/yumbootstrap --verbose \
    --include=openssh-server --group=Core \
    centos-6 /mnt/chroot/centos-6-chroot

Installing centos-6 suite, installing custom packages by hand from parent OS:

# CHROOT=/mnt/chroot/centos-6-chroot
# /usr/sbin/yumbootstrap --verbose --no-scripts centos-6 $CHROOT
# yum --installroot=$CHROOT -c $CHROOT/yumbootstrap/yum.conf install ...
# /usr/sbin/yumbootstrap --verbose --just-scripts $CHROOT

Installing yumbootstrap

For Debian-based distributions, dpkg-dev, fakeroot, debhelper (9+), python, and python-setuptools. For installing the package, yum is also required.

dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc
dpkg -i ../yumbootstrap*.deb

For Red Hat derivatives you need rpm-build.

make srpm
rpmbuild --rebuild yumbootstrap-*.src.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/*/yumbootstrap-*.rpm

Contact and License

yumbootstrap is written by Stanislaw Klekot . The primary distribution point is http://dozzie.jarowit.net/.

yumbootstrap is distributed under GNU GPL v3 license. See LICENSE file for details.