How to Enable EPEL Repository in CentOS and RHEL

EPEL stands for ‘Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux‘ , as the name suggest epel provides additional rpm packages for RHEL, CentOS, Scientific Linux (SL) & Oracle Enterprise Linux (OLE). EPEL is created and maintained by Fedora community and EPEL packages are 100% free/libre open source software (FLOSS).

In this post we will discuss how to enable epel repository in CentOS / RHEL system.

EPEL Repository on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

On CentOS 7 system, run the following yum command to enable EPEL repository

$ sudo yum install -y epel-release

On RHEL 7 System, run following commands to enable EPEL repository

$ wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
$ sudo rpm -Uvh epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

EPEL Repositroy on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

On CentOS 8 system, run following dnf command to enable repository

$ sudo dnf install -y epel-release

On RHEL 8 system, execute the beneath commands to enable epel repository.

$ wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
$ sudo rpm -Uvh epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

Note : EPEL repository file is located under ‘/etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo’

List New Repository

Once EPEL repository is enabled then run following command to list newly added repo,

$ sudo yum repolist     // CentOS 7 / RHEL 7
$ sudo dnf repolist    // CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

Sample output

List EPEL Packages

If you wish to list all packages available in EPEL repository then execute following command,

$ sudo yum --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo="epel" list available

Sample Output

Getting Package Info

If you want to view package information from epel repository then run beneath command,

$ sudo yum --enablerepo=epel info htop

Installing package from epel repository

Let’s assume we want install htop package on our system from epel repository, run following command.

$ sudo yum --enablerepo=epel install -y htop

That’s all from article, I hope you have better understanding now on how to enable and use epel repository on CentOS and RHEL system.