Download RPM packages from a YUM repo without installing

This how-to will explain how to download rpm packages from a yum repository without installing them. This will work on Redhat Enterprise Linux 5.x, Fedora and CentOS 5.x.

You need to install yum plugin called yum-downloadonly. This plugin adds a --downloadonly flag to yum so that yum can download the packages without installing/updating them. Following options supported by this plugin:

• --downloadonly : don't update, just download a rpm file to default yum cache directory/var/cache/yum/.
• --downloaddir=/path/to/dir : specifies an alternate directory to store packages such as /tmp

Install the yum-downloadonly plugin:

Type the following command to install plugin, enter:

# yum install yum-downloadonly

Now for downloading rpm packages from an already configured yum repository use the following command:

# yum update httpd -y --downloadonly
By default package will by downloaded and stored in /var/cache/yum/ directory. But, you can specifies an alternate directory to store packages such as /opt, enter:

# yum update httpd -y --downloadonly --downloaddir=/opt

Method 2: yum-utils.noarch Package

Downloading rpm packages from a yum repository can be accomplished by the below described method also!!!

yum-utils is a collection of utilities and examples for the yum package manager. It includes utilities by different authors that make yum easier and more powerful to use. These tools include: debuginfo-install, package-cleanup, repoclosure, repodiff, repo-graph, repomanage, repoquery, repo-rss, reposync, repotrack, verifytree, yum-builddep, yum-complete-transaction, yumdownloader, yum-debug-dump and yum-groups-manager.

# yum -y install yum-utils.noarch

Now use the yumdownloader command which is a program for downloading RPMs from Yum repositories. Type the following command to download httpd rpm file:

# yumdownloader httpd

Sample output:

Loaded plugins: rhnplugin
httpd-2.2.3-31.el5_4.2.x86_64.rpm       1.2 MB 00:00