Install Yum on minimal CentOS
0Hello all!
I ran into an interesting issue with a “minimal” CentOS installation and had to help a colleague install Yum on a server where only rpm existed. Here’s the final RPM line I used:
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/yum-3.2.22-39.el5.centos.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-elementtree-1.2.6-5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-iniparse-0.2.3-4.el5.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/rpm-python-4.4.2.3-27.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-urlgrabber-3.1.0-6.el5.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-21.el5.centos.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-3.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/rpm-4.4.2.3-27.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/rpm-libs-4.4.2.3-27.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/popt-1.10.2.3-27.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/m2crypto-0.16-8.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/libxml2-2.6.26-2.1.12.el5_7.2.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/logrotate-3.7.4-12.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/expat-1.95.8-8.3.el5_5.3.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/nss-3.12.10-8.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/nspr-4.8.8-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
This should install Yum and all the required depedancies for CentOS 5 x86_64 (at the time of this writing). Once this is ran, yum should be available to install any other software needed.
OpenSSH won’t start
0I ran into an issue with OpenSSH Server would not start after fresh installation of it on a minimal CentOS 5 x86_64 VPS:
[root@vps ~]# /etc/init.d/sshd restart Stopping sshd: [FAILED] Generating SSH1 RSA host key: [FAILED]
I delved a little further and discovered that ssh-keygen was failing:
[root@vps ~]# ssh-keygen cannot read from /dev/urandom, No such file or directory
And finally, from there, I generated the urandom file:
/sbin/MAKEDEV urandom
Also, to ensure on restarts the urandom file (as well as pty and tty) are created, I added the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
/sbin/MAKEDEV pty /sbin/MAKEDEV tty /sbin/MAKEDEV urandom
Hopefully this helps if you run into a similar issue down the line!