How to setup EPEL repos on CentOS

If you’re wanting packages from the EPEL repos that are available to RHEL installations, it’s a simple thing to get them.

You can start at the main Fedora repository for EPEL, and work your way around.  Or if you’re in a hurry, use these instructions.
(Note: these are mirror sites; if they are inaccessible, refer back to the main repo linked abve, and you’ll get redirected to a different mirror in most cases)

For CentOS 5

  1. Install the repo RPM from here.
    # rpm -ivh http://mirror.symnds.com/distributions/fedora-epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
  2. Install the GPG key from here.
    # rpm --import http://mirror.symnds.com/distributions/fedora-epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-5

For CentOS 6

  1. Install the repo RPM from here.
    # rpm -ivh http://mirror.symnds.com/distributions/fedora-epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
  2. Install the GPG key from here.
    # rpm --import http://mirror.symnds.com/distributions/fedora-epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-6

For either one, if you do not want the repo used by default when you run yum, edit /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo, and in the section named [epel] change enabled=1 to enabled=0
Then, to use the repo, add --enabelrepo=epel to your yum commands.  For example:
# yum --enablerepo=epel update

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