Two questions on repositories:

1.  How does one in fact install a repository on SL 6?  On RHEL 5 
(CentOS 5) there were RPMs that installed specific repositories, or 
detailed instructions included access to GPG security authentication 
keys.  I have not even been able to find how to install the additional 
repositories that came with SL 6 that I did not select during the actual 
installation of the system from the bootable install DVD.  Must I 
"upgrade" from the bootable DVD?  Are the RPMs for the SL repos on the DVD?

2.  The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton evidently also has a 
RHEL clone, currently RHEL 6.1.  URL: http://puias.math.ias.edu/
The distro states:  Custom Red Hat® Distribution and Mirror. A project 
of members of the computing staff of  Princeton University and the 
Institute for Advanced Study.

Introduction

This project was started long before  CentOS or other projects were 
available. Even if you do not install the core distribution, the Addons, 
Computational and Unsupported repositories may be of use to you.

End quote.

As with SL, PUIAS evidently has professional institutional support, 
unlike say CentOS or the DAG repository.  I am not complaining about the 
quality of either CentOS or DAG, but an institutional professional 
staffing commitment often leads to a professional result, particularly 
when done by a professional entity (e.g., Fermilab/CERN or the Institute 
for Advanced Study).

I found PUIAS because I was looking for a package that I had built from 
source on CentOS from the actual tar.gz source (not a RPM) from the 
source download site and I currently have neither my personal time nor 
staff to go down that path right now.  If I can find a prebuilt RPM, 
this would be much easier.  The PUIAS RPM for what I need generates a 
large number of dependencies for other utilities not included in the 
base SL repository but present on PUIAS, and it is likely that each of 
these RPMs calls for yet more dependencies.

How does one add, say, PUIAS as a repository search path with precedence 
being given to SL over PUIAS except as needed?  A simple answer such as 
"import a key" or "install a XML repodata file" are not sufficient 
unlike using RPM to install a rpm file -- where (what directory/file) 
and how (what commands) specifically are needed to accomplish this task? 
  Note that PUIAS packages end with el6.x86_64.rpm as a RHEL 6 X86-64 
package should.

Yasha Karant

On 06/20/2011 08:55 PM, Kevin Thomas wrote:
> I installed SL6 (i386) tonight in a virtual machine for testing and I
> decided to run a yum update and was surprised that it failed because it
> was having trouble contacting the repos. Below is a snippet of what I'm
> talking about. What repos are valid and why am I seeing this?
>
> Total download size: 132 M
> Is this ok [y/N]: y
> Downloading Packages:
> http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> (2/52): avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 33 kB 00:00
> (3/52): avahi-glib-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 19 kB 00:00
> (4/52): avahi-libs-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 53 kB 00:00
> (5/52): avahi-ui-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 30 kB 00:00
> (6/52): dbus-1.2.24-4.el6_0.i686.rpm | 210 kB 00:00
> (7/52): dbus-libs-1.2.24-4.el6_0.i686.rpm | 127 kB 00:00
> (8/52): dbus-x11-1.2.24-4.el6_0.i686.rpm | 38 kB 00:00
> (9/52): dhclient-4.1.1-12.P1.el6_0.4.i686.rpm | 334 kB 00:00
> (10/52): firefox-3.6.17-1.el6_0.i686.rpm | 14 MB 00:08
> (11/52): gdm-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 1.0 MB 00:01
> (12/52): gdm-libs-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 93 kB 00:00
> (13/52): gdm-plugin-fingerprint-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.r | 95 kB 00:00
> (14/52): gdm-user-switch-applet-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.r | 104 kB 00:00
> (15/52): glibc-2.12-1.7.el6_0.5.i686.rpm | 4.3 MB 00:03
> (16/52): glibc-common-2.12-1.7.el6_0.5.i686.rpm | 14 MB 00:08
> (17/52): kernel-2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.i686.rpm | 21 MB 00:16
> (18/52): kernel-firmware-2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.noarch.rpm | 2.5 MB 00:02
> (19/52): krb5-libs-1.8.2-3.el6_0.7.i686.rpm | 689 kB 00:01
> (20/52): libpurple-2.7.9-3.el6.i686.rpm | 6.1 MB 00:03
> (21/52): libtiff-3.9.4-1.el6_0.3.i686.rpm | 337 kB 00:00
> (22/52): livecd-tools-0.3.6-4.el6.i686.rpm | 59 kB 00:00
> (23/52): logrotate-3.7.8-12.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 52 kB 00:00
> (24/52): nss-3.12.8-3.el6_0.0.sl6.i686.rpm | 750 kB 00:01
> (25/52): nss-sysinit-3.12.8-3.el6_0.0.sl6.i686.rpm | 25 kB 00:00
> (26/52): openldap-2.4.19-15.el6_0.2.i686.rpm | 232 kB 00:00
> (27/52): openssl-1.0.0-10.el6.i686.rpm | 1.4 MB 00:01
> (28/52): perl-5.10.1-119.el6.i686.rpm | 9.7 MB 00:07
> (29/52): perl-Module-Pluggable-3.90-119.el6.i686.rpm | 36 kB 00:00
> (30/52): perl-Pod-Escapes-1.04-119.el6.i686.rpm | 28 kB 00:00
> (31/52): perl-Pod-Simple-3.13-119.el6.i686.rpm | 208 kB 00:00
> (32/52): perl-libs-5.10.1-119.el6.i686.rpm | 589 kB 00:00
> (33/52): perl-version-0.77-119.el6.i686.rpm | 47 kB 00:00
> (34/52): pidgin-2.7.9-3.el6.i686.rpm | 1.4 MB 00:01
> (35/52): policycoreutils-2.0.83-19.8.el6_0.i686.rpm | 669 kB 00:00
> (36/52): polkit-0.96-2.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 156 kB 00:00
> (37/52): polkit-desktop-policy-0.96-2.el6_0.1.noarch.rpm | 5.7 kB 00:00
> (38/52): postfix-2.6.6-2.2.el6_1.i686.rpm | 2.0 MB 00:01
> ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/python-2.6.6-20.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] FTP Error 425 :
> ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/python-2.6.6-20.el6.i686.rpm
>
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/python-2.6.6-20.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/python-2.6.6-20.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/python-2.6.6-20.el6.i686.rpm:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> (40/52): python-imgcreate-0.3.6-4.el6.i686.rpm | 82 kB 00:00
> (41/52): python-libs-2.6.6-20.el6.i686.rpm | 602 kB 00:00
> (42/52): rdesktop-1.6.0-8.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 144 kB 00:00
> (43/52): rsync-3.0.6-5.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 328 kB 00:00
> (44/52): selinux-policy-3.7.19-54.el6_0.5.noarch.rpm | 719 kB 00:00
> (45/52): selinux-policy-targeted-3.7.19-54.el6_0.5.noarc | 2.3 MB 00:02
> (46/52): sudo-1.7.4p5-5.el6.i686.rpm | 412 kB 00:00
> (47/52): thunderbird-3.1.10-1.el6_0.i686.rpm | 29 MB 00:22
> (48/52): tigervnc-1.0.90-0.15.20110314svn4359.el6_1.1.i6 | 267 kB 00:00
> (49/52): tigervnc-server-1.0.90-0.15.20110314svn4359.el6 | 1.1 MB 00:01
> (50/52): tzdata-2011g-1.el6.noarch.rpm | 444 kB 00:00
> (51/52): xorg-x11-server-utils-7.4-15.el6_0.2.i686.rpm | 126 kB 00:00
> (52/52): xulrunner-1.9.2.17-4.el6_0.i686.rpm | 9.2 MB 00:06
>
>
> Error Downloading Packages:
> avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686: failure: avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm from
> sl-security: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
> python-2.6.6-20.el6.i686: failure: python-2.6.6-20.el6.i686.rpm from
> sl-security: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
>
> [root@test ~]# yum install fastest-mirror
> Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
> http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/repodata/repomd.xml:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/repodata/repomd.xml:
> [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - ""
> Trying other mirror.
>
>
> Kevin