Caching updates locally

[Stuart]

"Joe Tseng" wrote:
> I want to be able to cache yum updates locally so when I build machines via 
> kickstart I can have them update more quickly from a local server.  I can't 
> seem to recall how to do this using wget, and googling hasn't turned 
> anything up yet.  Does anyone know of some page that describes how to do 
> this?  Thx.

I had this same problem 6 months ago when fc5 was released.
I wanted to create a local repo containing just the updates
and extras I needed.  As far as I could determine then, using 
such "partial" repositories was not possible without patching 
yum.  The order in which yum tries different repositories 
is not controllable and essentially random, so that even if 
one has a repo with a needed rpm sitting on the same disk, 
yum is still likely to download it from the internet.  

I submitted a pretty trivial patch to the developers to
fix this but it was rejected with the comment that such 
functionality should be provided via a plugin.  Unfortunate 
that there seems to be no plugin hook at the place in yum 
where the repo ordering needs to be done.  And I guess if 
you are using kickstart, a yum patch wouldn't help you. 

My sense is the yum people don't really care that much
about people with slow/no internet connections (or there
would be a means of installing from CD already.)  But its
free software so not much point complaining.

I do think it is wrong of fc5 docs to say at install time
(IIRC) that you need not install everything now because 
you can easily install additional software later.  This
is only true if you have a fast/good internet connection,
There should be a warning to this effect. (Maybe there 
is in fc6, haven't installed it yet.)