How to enable EPEL Repo

EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is open source and free community based repository project from Fedora team which provides 100% high quality add-on software packages for Linux distribution including RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), CentOS, and Scientific Linux. Epel project is not a part of RHEL/Cent OS but it is designed for major Linux distributions by providing lots of open source packages like networking, sys admin, programming, monitoring and so on. Most of the epel packages are maintained by Fedora repo.

Why we use EPEL repository?

• Provides lots of open source packages to install via Yum.

• Epel repo is 100% open source and free to use.

• It does not provide any core duplicate packages and no compatibility issues.

• All epel packages are maintained by Fedora repo.

How To Enable EPEL Repository in RHEL/CentOS 7/6/5?

First, you need to download the file using Wget and then install it using RPM on your system to enable the EPEL repository.
Repo Link - https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/

wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm


How Do I Verify EPEL Repo?

# yum repolist

Sample Output

Loaded plugins: downloadonly, fastestmirror, priorities
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: centos.aol.in
* epel: ftp.cuhk.edu.hk
* extras: centos.aol.in
* rpmforge: be.mirror.eurid.eu
* updates: centos.aol.in
Reducing CentOS-5 Testing to included packages only
Finished
1469 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
repo id                           repo name                                                      status
base                              CentOS-5 - Base                                               2,718+7
epel Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 5 - i386 4,320+1,408
extras                            CentOS-5 - Extras                                              229+53
rpmforge                          Red Hat Enterprise 5 - RPMforge.net - dag                      11,251
repolist: 19,075

How Do I Use EPEL Repo?


# yum --enablerepo=epel info zabbix

Let’s install Zabbix package using epel repo option –enablerepo=epel switch.

# yum --enablerepo=epel install zabbix

Source : Tecmint