Building a RHEL Repo Container

Sonario: you want to go off grid AND network install packages from a known release?
Solution: Move the packages from RHEL ISO images and any other packages you require into a containerised web server.

This is a bit of forced use case with many many other great solutions but we are building custom images from scratch without the internet and I thought putting the repo server into a container would be a simple from scratch tutorial which readers can quickly adapt to their own thing. Better than hello world?

Configure Repositories

This example is based on RHEL 7.6 so I register and attach a subscription before we get down to business.

subscription-manager register
subscription-manager attach --pool <pool_id>

Repos for Container-ing

subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms

Building a From Scratch Container

yum install buildah runc podman
container_spud=$(buildah from scratch)
scratchmnt=$(buildah mount $container_spud)
rpm --root $scratchmnt --initdb
yum install yum-utils
yumdownloader --destdir=/tmp redhat-release-server
rpm --root $scratchmnt -ihv /tmp/redhat-release-server*.rpm

Add Web Server with Static Content

yum install -y --installroot=$scratchmnt httpd
rm $scratchmnt/var/www/html/index.html
mkdir /mnt/rhel_installation
mount -oro,loop rhel-server-7.6-x86_64-dvd.iso /mnt/rhel_installation
mkdir -p $scratchmnt/var/www/html/rpm_repos/rhel-server-7.6-x86_64-dvd
cp -av  /mnt/rhel_installation $scratchmnt/var/www/html/rpm_repos/rhel-server-7.6-x86_64-dvd

Create more directories and use the createrepo command from the createrepo package to turn a directory of RPMs into a proper YUM repository.

createrepo <directory>

Turn the buildah container into image for sharing and deployment.

buildah config --cmd "/usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND" $container_spud
buildah config --port 80/tcp $container_spud
buildah commit $container_spud spud_content_server:latest
podman images

Launch the RHEL Content Container.

podman run -p 8080:80 -d --name httpd-server <image_id>

Web browse to: http://<container_host>:8080/rpm_repos/rhel-server-7.6-x86_64-dvd/

RHEL hosts wanting to use the repository need a repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ similar to the following:

[RHEL76InstallMedia]  
name=Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6  
baseurl = http://<container_host>:8080/rpm_repos/rhel-server-7.6-x86_64-dvd/
metadata_expire=-1  
gpgcheck=0  

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