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September 29, 2009

RHEL-5 to CentOS

Converting a host to CentOS is very simple. Especially when starting with RHEL5.

Running RHEL provided os on a non critical system is somewhat overkill IMHO. So I find the simplest solution is to convert these types of hosts to CentOS based systems, after all its the exact same code base.

So here's the quick and dirty instructions to do this:

Get things ready (as root)

> yum clean all
> mkdir centos
> cd centos

Download what you will need. Pick a mirror

> wget http://your-mirror/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5
> wget http://your-mirror/centos/5/os/ARCH-TYPE/CentOS/centos-release-5-3.el5.centos.1.i386.rpm
> wget http://your-mirror/centos/5/os/ARCH-TYPE/CentOS/centos-release-notes-5.3-3.i386.rpm
> wget http://your-mirror/centos/5/os/ARCH-TYPE/CentOS/yum-3.2.19-18.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
> wget http://your-mirror/centos/5/os/ARCH-TYPE/CentOS/yum-updatesd-0.9-2.el5.noarch.rpm
> wget http://your-mirror/centos/5/os/ARCH-TYPE/CentOS/yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-2.el5.i386.rpm
> wget http://your-mirror/centos/5/os/ARCH-TYPE/CentOS/yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-13.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
> wget http://your-mirror/centos/5/os/ARCH-TYPE/CentOS/python-iniparse-0.2.3-4.el5.noarch.rpm

Remove RHEL bindings

> rpm -e --nodeps redhat-release
> rpm -e yum-rhn-plugin

Install the CentOS parts

> rpm -import RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5
> rpm -Uvh *.rpm
> yum update
> yum upgrade

Your now following CentOS instead of RHEL. Reboot if you want. Update at will.

Posted by Kevin Foote in work on September 29, 2009