How to install EPEL Repository on RHEL/CentOS 7.x/6.x/5.x

This is "How To" guide to show us, how one can configure RHEL/CentOS system to use Extra Packages from EPEL repository. After enabling the EPEL repository, one can easily install standard open source packages and their dependencies by using YUM command.  

In this article, we would discuss below points:
What is EPEL?
Why one should use EPEL repository?
How To enable EPEL repository on RHEL/CentOS 7/6/5?
How To verify if EPEL repository is enabled or not?
How To use EPEL repository?

What is EPEL?

EPEL stands for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. It is an open source, community supported repository from Fedora Special Interest Group that provides a high quality set of additional packages for Enterprise Linux like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Scientific Linux (SL) and Oracle Linux (OL).

Why one should use EPEL repository? 

•  EPEL packages are usually based on their Fedora counterparts and will never conflict with or replace packages in the base Enterprise Linux distributions.
• EPEL provides free and open source software unencumbered by patents or any legal issues. 
• All EPEL packages are created, maintained and managed by Fedora community. 
• Provides lots of open source packages to install via YUM command. 

How To enable EPEL Repository on RHEL/CentOS 7/6/5?

EPEL has an epel-release package,  available as noarch rpm (can be installed on both 32 and 64 bit systems). One would only need to install this package for their version of Enterprise Linux then this would allow them to install packages and their dependencies from EPEL using YUM command.

Their are two ways to install epel-release package:

1.  Directly installing the epel-release package using YUM command
   

   sudo yum install epel-release

   
   Output:
   
   
   
2. Download the respective rpm file using wget and then install it using rpm command
   You can download the latest epel-release package from the official site.
   One can also find it from from below:
   

   ## For EL7 version
   wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
   ## For EL6 version
   wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm
   ## For EL5 version
   wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-5.noarch.rpm
   
   ## For installing, use the rpm command
   rpm -ivh epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm
   

   
   Output:
   
   

How To verify if EPEL repository is enabled or not?

Run below command to verify if EPEL repository is enable or not.

yum repolist

Output:

How To use EPEL repository?

One can use YUM command to search and install the packages under EPEL repository. Run the below commands as required:

## To list all the available packages under an EPEL repository
sudo yum --enablerepo="epel" list available
## Check the availability of desired package under an EPEL repository
sudo yum --enablerepo="epel" list available | grep 'package-name'
## To get small information about any packages under EPEL repository
yum --enablerepo=epel info ansible

Output:

Thank you for reading this article. Hope you would like it. If you have any suggestion or have any question do let me know in the comment box. Happy Learning!!