In most cases, HTTP or HTTPS is used to access repositories. In the YUM configuration, either “http://” or “https://” must be used as the baseurl for the corresponding repository.

An Apache web server with document root /var/www/htdocs is available on the aixweb system. A small repository was created locally in the myrepo subdirectory. This should now be accessed from another AIX system via HTTP. For this we have created the following repo file:

aix04 # cat /tmp/myrepo.repo
[myrepo]
name=my private repository
baseurl=http://aixweb/myrepo
aix04 # 

The IP address can also be specified instead of the host name aixweb.

The repository is added again with the yum-config-manager command:

aix04 # yum-config-manager --add-repo /tmp/myrepo.repo
adding repo from: /tmp/myrepo.repo
grabbing file /tmp/myrepo.repo to /opt/freeware/etc/yum/repos.d/myrepo.repo
myrepo.repo                                                                      |   71 B  00:00:00    
repo saved to /opt/freeware/etc/yum/repos.d/myrepo.repo
aix04 # 

The repository is available immediately. As the output of “yum repolist” shows, the repository myrepo has 4 RPM packages:

aix04 # yum repolist
myrepo                                                                           | 2.9 kB  00:00:00    
myrepo/primary_db                                                                | 3.4 kB  00:00:00    
repo id                                     repo name                                             status
AIX_Toolbox                                 AIX generic repository                                2740
AIX_Toolbox_71                              AIX 7.1 specific repository                            295
AIX_Toolbox_noarch                          AIX noarch repository                                  301
myrepo                                      my private repository                                    4
repolist: 3340
aix04 # 

If HTTPS is to be used instead of HTTP (provided the web server has been configured for HTTPS), then only http must be replaced by https in the baseurl.

If the web server is configured such that authentication is necessary for access to the repository (user name, password), then these can be stored in the YUM configuration (analogous to FTP in the previous chapter). To do this, the user name and password are simply separated from each other with a colon and entered in the basurl in front of the server name (separated by an “@“). If the user name is “yumrepo” and the associated password for access is “s3cr3t“, then the baseurl must be changed as follows:

baseurl=http://yumrepo:s3cr4t@aixweb/myrepo

or when using HTTPS:

baseurl=https://yumrepo:s3cr3t@aixweb/myrepo