Rocky Linux Repositories

https://wiki.rockylinux.org/rocky/repo/

There are several repositories that are provided by Rocky Linux and may differ between major releases. There are also community approved repositories as well, installable typically from the extras repository.

About ‘enabled’ and ‘disabled’ repository configuration files

Please read man 5 dnf.conf, in particular the section of enabled under the REPO section. A line containing enabled=0 or enabled=1 will disable or enable a repository. This can also be modified using dnf config-manager --set-enabled or --set-disabled. When this is done, it is recommended to run dnf clean all.

Version Policy

During a Rocky Linux minor release lifecycle as a package receives updates, the previous version will coexist in the repositories to allow a user to downgrade in case of a regression or other use cases (such as security only updates). Upon new minor release, all previous updates/versions that are not the latest are not carried over.

Rocky Linux 9 does not currently support this policy and can be expected in a future Rocky Linux 9 version. Please see Peridot Issue #18.

A more detailed explanation of the version policy can be found in our Version Guide.

Notes on: Difference between X and X.Y in mirrors

You may notice that on mirrors or our primary download location that there are X and X.Y directories. Rocky Linux sets the releasever dnf variable to the major version (e.g., 8, 9) rather than a minor version (8.6, 9.0, and so on). This effectively means that it will ask the mirror manager or configured baseurl for that version, which will always point to the latest available release at a given time. This helps simplify the user experience when installing software and updating systems throughout the life of a release.

In the event a new release is available, the symlink is changed to point to the new directory, and mirror manager also undergoes changes to accomodate the new release, which should be transparent to most users.

Base Repositories

Each major release has a set of repositories that come default with the distribution. Below is a list of common repositories for each major release, including their repo id.

Notes on: CRB

CRB is “Code Ready Builder” - PowerTools was a carryover from CentOS, which is still the equivalent of CRB in RHEL. crb will be the repository name going forward in Rocky Linux and other derivatives starting with version 9. Rocky Linux 8 matches CentOS’s use of PowerTools in order to be as compatible as possible with what users expect.

Notes on: Lack of “updates” repo

In older major versions, it was normal to have an “updates” repo. Fedora for example still follows this. However, in EL8, EL9, and likely so on, there is no “updates” repository. This means all updates happen as is in the same repository. So if bash receives an update, it will land in baseos as there is no updates repository.

There are extra repositories offered by Rocky Linux.

This repository contains packages that provide some additional functionality to Rocky without breaking upstream compatibility. For example, rpaste used for sending logs, configuration, or system information to our paste bin.

These are not tested by upstream nor available in the upstream product.

Notes on: Plus

This repository contains packages that either:

  • A) replace a core component via patched functionality
  • B) build a component that was originally exclusive for one architecture (e.g., open-vm-tools built for x86_64 but not aarch64 in Rocky 8) or…
  • C) providing packages that were built but not traditionally provided by upstream, and requested to be available by the community.

Packages that fall under A and B will have a .plus added to their version tag. These are not tested nor available in the upstream product.

Notes on: Devel

The devel (development) repository are packages that are not normally provided in the base nor extra repositories for the purposes of providing dependencies or devel packages that may not be provided by upstream. As such, it is treated as a “buildroot” repository, as this repository may contain all packages that are provided for Rocky Linux. Additionally, the i686 architecture is provided for the cases of building multilib, as it is not a primary architecture released.

This repository should only be enabled for package building/development purposes and should not be permanently enabled.

Notes on: SIG repositories

Some Special Interest Groups provide additional repositories that enhance the Enterprise Linux experience. These repositories are installable via rocky-release-* and centos-release-* packages found in the extras repository.

All SIG repositories can be found here

Vault

The vault is a historic archive of previous Rocky Linux releases. These previous releases, including ISOs and other images, are typically moved into the vault area of our tier 0 mirror between a day and a week once a new minor release version is available. The vault can be found here.

Warning

The vault is meant as a historic archive of previous releases of Rocky Linux and not for general use. These are versions that are NOT supported and are NOT recommended for general use as they contain unfixed bugs and unpatched security vulnerabilities.

The community may not be able to assist you with issues with these releases, so it is recommended that you keep your systems up to date.

As with Enterprise Linux and Fedora, there are additional community approved repositories for Rocky Linux. Below are repositories that are approved by Rocky Linux as well as the community.

Notes on: EPEL

Using EPEL requires that the CRB or PowerTools repository is enabled on your system, as some EPEL packages depend on packages from that repo. There are multiple ways to enable the repository:

  • Using dnf

    • Rocky 8: dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools
    • Rocky 9+: dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb

  • Modifying the repo files and setting enabled=1

    • Rocky 8: /etc/yum.repos.d/Rocky-PowerTools.repo under [powertools]
    • Rocky 9+: /etc/yum.repos.d/rocky.repo under [crb]

  • Running dnf install epel-release and then running crb enable

We recommend checking out the EPEL Quickstart Guide for more information.

Notes on: Unlisted Repositories

If there is a repository that you use (or maintain) and you do not see it here, it is likely that we may not know of it. Unfortunately, this happens. If there are popular repositories that are used in the Enterprise Linux community that should be added to the list, you may drop us a line in Mattermost, IRC, or an issue to the wiki git repository.

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