YUM or Yellowdog Updater Modified is a utility for managing of rpm packages & is available for all Redhat OS & other Linux distros based on Redhat. It is used to install, remove, update & to gather information about rpm packages through command line interface or by using graphical mode.
While using RPM for installing packages, we are required to install all the dependencies before we can install the package but YUM automatically resolves & installs dependencies without us having to download & install every dependency.
Recommended Read: Examples on how to use RPM command in Linux
Also Read: Beginner’s guide to Backup Postgres Database
In this tutorial, we will learn how to use the Yum command in Linux. Let’s see the syntax for using yum command in Linux.
Syntax:-
# yum -(options) package_name
Examples for using yum command in Linux
1- Install a package
To install a package, use the following command,
# yum install package_name
# yum install httpd
2- Install a package from the local system, http or ftp
If we have an rpm package available on the local system or we have an URL, we can also install it with yum,
# yum localinstall package_name.rpm
# yum localinstall http://xyz.com/package_name.rpm
3- Update package
To update a single package, the command is
# yum update httpd
To update all the installed packages on the system, use
# yum update
We can also update a package to a particular version with the option ‘update-to’.
4- Update only security-related packages
Rather than updating complete packages, we can only apply the updates to security related packages,
# yum update –security
5- Downgrade a package
To downgrade an installed package that has been updated previously, we can use the following command,
# yum downgrade package_name
6- Reinstall a package
To reinstall a package on the system, to address any issue that might have arisen due to misconfiguration or deletion of a file, use the following command,
# yum reinstall httpd
7- Remove a package
To remove a package, we can use either of the following two commands,
# yum remove httpd
OR
# yum erase httpd
There is another command to remove package & also remove other additional unneeded packages,
# yum autoremove httpd
8- Install a group of packages
To install a group of packages onto the system, use
# yum groupinstall ‘web server’
If you need to list down all the group packages, the command is,
# yum grouplist
9- List packages
To list all available packages from the repositories,
# yum list available
To list all installed packages,
# yum list installed
To list all available & installed packages,
# yum list all
10- Display package information
To display the complete information about a package,
# yum info vsftpd
11- Display dependencies for a package
To display a list of all dependencies required by a package,
# yum deplist vsftpd
12- Find packages for mentioned file
To get the name of packages for the mentioned file, use
# yum provides ‘/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf’
13- Search for package
To find packages with the search term in name & description , use
# yum search httpd
14- List updates information for packages
To list all the updated info, use
# yum updateinfo httpd
15- List yum repositories
To list down all the yum repositories enabled on the system,
# yum repolist
If we need information for the enabled repositories, we can use
# yum repoinfo repo_name
16- Check rpm database
To check the local rpm database for errors,
# yum check
Note:- This command runs for a long time.
17- Check yum history
To check the history for yum command, we can execute
# yum history list
This will provide list of all transactions with a serial number assigned to all transactions. These serial number can further be used to perform some operations like
List complete information for a transaction
# yum history info transaction_number
# yum history info 2
Undo a transaction
# yum history undo 2
Redo a transaction
# yum history redo 2
18- Download repo data to cache
To download yum repository data to cache, use
# yum makecache
19- Clear cached packages
To delete all packages saved in cache,
# yum clean packages
To completely clean packages & metadata from the cache,
# yum clean all
20- Get help
To list down all commands with options,
# yum help
With this we end our tutorial on how to use Yum command in Linux, please feel free to send in any questions or queries using the comment box below.
