How to enable EPEL repository on Centos

What’s an ‘EPEL repository’?

The EPEL repository is managed by the EPEL group, which is a Special Interest Group within the Fedora Project. The ‘EPEL’ part is an abbreviation that stands for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. The EPEL group creates, maintains and manages a high-quality set of additional packages. These packages may be software not included in the core repository, or sometimes updates which haven’t been provided yet.

The EPEL repository can be used with the following Linux Distributions:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
• CentOS
• Scientific Linux
• Oracle Linux

Enabling the EPEL repo

Method I. Installing EPEL on CentOS via yum

By far CentOS is the easiest distro to install EPEL on. The CentOS distribution includes a repo called ‘CentOS Extras’ by default. Within this repo users can find a EPEL package, so in this case enabling EPEL is as easy as installing any other package.

just run the following command:

# yum install epel-release

If, for whatever reason, your version of CentOS is missing the CentOS Extras repo necessary for this to work you can follow the directions below.

Method II. Officially install EPEL via fedoraproject

1. RHEL/CentOS 6:

   # yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm

2. RHEL/CentOS 7:

   # yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

   • on RHEL 7 it is recommended to also enable the optional, extras, and HA repositories since EPEL packages may depend on packages from these repositories:

     # subscription-manager repos --enable "rhel-*-optional-rpms" --enable "rhel-*-extras-rpms"  --enable "rhel-ha-for-rhel-*-server-rpms"

3. RHEL/CentOS 8:

   # yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

   • on RHEL 8 it is required to also enable the codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-*-rpms repository since EPEL packages may depend on packages from it:

     # ARCH=$(/bin/arch)
     # subscription-manager repos --enable "codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-${ARCH}-rpms"

   • on CentOS 8 it is recommended to also enable the PowerTools repository since EPEL packages may depend on packages from it:

     # dnf config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools

Centos 6 error message using epel "Cannot retrieve metalink for repository: epel. Please verify its path and try again"

As a solution, uncomment the third line of the /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo file and comment out the fourth line.

1. open file /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

   [epel]
   name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - $basearch
   #baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/$basearch
   mirrorlist=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-6&arch=$basearch

2. Modify it to:

   [epel]
   name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - $basearch
   baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/$basearch
   #mirrorlist=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-6&arch=$basearch

3. Clean and reinstall your package

   # yum clean all
   # yum install -y "your package"

If that doesn’t work, modify DNS

1. Open the /etc/resolv.conf file and add the following:

   nameserver 8.8.8.8
   search localdomain

2. Then restart the network service

   # service network restart