How to update offline RHEL server without network connection to Red Hat Network/Proxy/Satellite.

last modified by Imogen Flood-Murphy on 01/05/12 - 07:45

Issue

A Red Hat Enterprise Linux server which is not connected to the Internet, needs to be updated, and has no access to a RHN Satellite or Proxy server.

Environment

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x

Resolution

There is a server which is offline and doesn't have any connection to the Internet.

Then we need station (or laptop / virtual machine), which has the same major Red Hat Enterprise Linux version as server and is connected to the Red Hat Network/Proxy/Satellite.

• Copy the /var/lib/rpm to the station connected to the Internet (you can use USB/CD…)

  scp -r /var/lib/rpm root@station:/tmp/
  

• Install the download only plugin for yum and createrepo on the machine which is connected to the Internet (Red Hat Network):

  yum install yum-downloadonly createrepo
  yum clean all
  

• Backup the original rpm directory on the station and replace it with the rpm directory from the "offline" server:

  mv -v /var/lib/rpm /var/lib/rpm.orig
  mv -v /tmp/rpm /var/lib/
  

• Download updates to /tmp/rpm_updates and return back the /var/lib/rpm

  mkdir -v /tmp/rpm_updates
  yum update --downloadonly --downloaddir /tmp/rpm_updates
  createrepo /tmp/rpm_updates
  rm -rvf /var/lib/rpm
  mv -v /var/lib/rpm.orig /var/lib/rpm
  

• Transfer the downloaded rpms to the server and update:

  scp -r /tmp/rpm_updates root@server:/tmp/
  ssh root@server
  
  cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel-offline-updates.repo << \EOF
  [rhel-offline-updates]
  name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux $releasever - $basearch - Offline Updates Repository
  baseurl=file:///tmp/rpm_updates
  enabled=1
  EOF
  
  yum upgrade
  

…and the server is updated.

These updates are the same as if "yum update" had been executed on a station that had a connection to the Internet.