How to install a specific version of some rpm with YUM

Posted in Linux

You want to install a special version of openssl that’s not the latest release, but some other app requires that specific one — how do you do it?

Lets assume you don’t have the right repository installed, and you need to set that up first. If you’re looking for some package that you know is in freshrpms or livna, then right out of the box, the default fedora installation won’t look in those repositories. So import the GPG key and add the repo file.

rpm –import http://freshrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY-freshrpms
rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/8/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

The –import lets the gpg check pass, and will fail if someone tries to stick a bad package in their repo, unless they’ve gotten ahold of their key a-la the fedora fiasco a few months ago. But don’t worry about any of that right now. Just import the key or else yum will complain when you try to install anything. The 2nd line “rpm -ivh”, that’s going to install a package. The package will have the .repo file, and it will put it in /etc/yum.repos.d/ that’s what really enables you to search in freshrpms.

Here’s another one, installing livna this time (livna is great for nvidia and ati drivers. They compile the video drivers for specific kernels and package them for you.)

rpm –import http://livna-dl.reloumirrors.net/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm

Now onto installing a specific version of something. If you know what you’re looking for, say openssl for example, put the version after the package name when you install it from the command line. You can also specify the architecture and distribution release version too. But when that doesn’t work, try this:

Open a browser and go to http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist

Find a mirror somewhat geographically close to you, or one that you know will serve your requests fast, and click on “http”. I’ll choose mirrors.kernel.org. At this point you’ll be in a basic directory browsing mode.

<a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/?C=N;O=D">Name</a>                    <a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/?C=M;O=A">Last modified</a>      <a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/?C=S;O=A">Size</a>
<hr /><a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/">Parent Directory</a>                             -
<a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/">core/</a>                   17-Oct-2006 12:46    -
<a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/development/">development/</a>            23-Nov-2008 06:30    -
<a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/extras/">extras/</a>                 18-Jun-2007 21:00    -
<a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/">releases/</a>               18-Nov-2008 22:12    -
<a href="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/">updates/</a>                21-Nov-2008 19:16

From here I clicked updates, then 9, then x86_64.newkey and ended up here: http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/9/x86_64.newkey/ with a huge list of packages.

Find the package you want, http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/9/x86_64.newkey/openssl-0.9.8g-9.fc9.i686.rpm“>openssl-0.9.8g-9.fc9.i686.rpm for example, and download it.

Find this file in a terminal. It’s probably going to download to your home directory, or ~/Desktop but that all depends on how your browser is set up. Once you’re there, here’s the line to install it properly.