Hello,

This is now resolved via the YUM mailing list.

There is a deficeincy in the yum documentation. 
The yum man pages fail to detail the required files and directory structures that are required to. PRE-EXIST in the —installroot path.

 'yum —installroot' could not substitute the proper $slreleasever  value into the output URL because the expected directories and files, located ‘<INSTALL_ROOT>/etc/yum/vars/….’,  did not exist.  By placing the proper config etc/... files and directories into the INSTALL_ROOT path  yum was able to generate the base file system. 

With any luck the man pages will be updated to include this important information.


Peter


> On Jan 28, 2020, at 2:50 PM, Peter Willis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am attempting to build an exported file system for diskless nodes.
> 
> My distribution is  SL 7.7 and the command I am using is:
> 
> yum install @Base kernel dracut-network nfs-utils --installroot=/node_root --releasever=/
> 
> The repository problem manifests as a mistranslation of the  '$slreleasever'   environment variable.
> 
> This makes all the FTP repositories used by YUM malformed. The value '$slreleasever'  appears to be inserted to the URLs rather than the proper value  '7x'. Hence the URLs read:
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__ftp.scientificlinux.org_linux_scientific_-2524slreleasever_x86-5F64_os_Packages_&d=DwIFAg&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=_XPWQWNwUeu0ZFKH219isUWT6M2TPEo7FIuWwhY0wjM&s=-7jDic-Wp04OefvpIx3KLdPeLmRh7bYielU8ZO8vb2w&e= .....
> 
> Rather than :
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__ftp.scientificlinux.org_linux_scientific_7x_x86-5F64_os_Packages_&d=DwIFAg&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=_XPWQWNwUeu0ZFKH219isUWT6M2TPEo7FIuWwhY0wjM&s=UKg8rHPPmAJWsAUGj3Sw9Xgc2ybKBgIYkQkEmYV6HmU&e= 
> 
> 
> Has anyone encountered this issue with yum before?
> 
> Is there a solution? 
> 
> I have tried       'yum clean all'    and friends.
> 
> Thanks for any help,
> 
> pwillis