On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 3:39 PM, Stefan Lasiewski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> When using third party Yum repositories, I often run into a problem with the
> yum variable $releasever . Scientific Linux uses a version number which is
> different then what is expected on many third party repositories, which
> means that I need to go in and make changes to the appropriate
> /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo files every time I run into this error.
>
> What is the best way to handle this problem, short of modifying the *.repo
> every single time? Is this a SL bug?

Red Hat calles it "6Server" or "6Workstation", which causes similar
problems, and every repository seems to handle it differently, The
EPEL repository uses "el4", "el5", and "el6", and uses "fc16", "fc17',
etc for fedora releases. So manipulating the .repo files can work
well, especially if the repo files themselves are in an RPM configured
to the major release number.

> In this example, I am simply trying to get Puppet installed on SL6.4:
>
> root@sl6:/etc/yum.repos.d # /usr/bin/yum -q -y install npm
> http://patches.fedorapeople.org/oldnode/stable/el6.4/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 22 - "The requested URL returned error: 404 Not
> Found"

You're going to need to modify your  .repo file, becuase geting Fedora
to change this is not going to happen.

> Trying other mirror.
> Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository:
> nodejs-stable. Please verify its path and try again
>
>
> The reason this error occurs is because the repo expects a $releasever
> variable like '5' or '6' . Visit the repo at
> http://patches.fedorapeople.org/oldnode/stable/ , and see that it expects
> strings like 'el6' & 'el5':

Not exactly. it's because Red Hat, CentOS, and Scientific Linux have
each used a different standard for naming their "releasever", and
different repositories follow different standards. (See EPEL for an
example). I like Scientific Linux's standard: it gives access to minor
release specific differentiation of base and update repositories.