How to install RHEL EPEL Repository on Centos

Keeping your Linux server up-to-date with the latest packages is no small task. One of the most popular repository for RHEL, Centos and Scientific Linux among others is EPEL, Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. EPEL is a Fedora Special Interest Group that creates, maintains, and manages a high quality set of additional packages for Enterprise Linux.

If you wish to upgrade your PHP, MySQL and HTTP to the latest available binary packages, you may opt to install EPEL and remi repositories on your linux system.

On Centos 6.x:

# wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
# wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
# rpm -Uvh remi-release-6*.rpm epel-release-6*.rpm

On Centos 5.x:

# wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
# wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-5.rpm
# rpm -Uvh remi-release-5*.rpm epel-release-5*.rpm

Once the two repositories are installed, you'll see additional repository definitions in the /etc/yum.repos.d firectory.

To install the latest stable packages from those two repositories just installed, perform:

# yum --enablerepo=remi install php-pecl php-mysql php-pear 
  php-pdo php-gd php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-xml

If you wish to explore beta versions of the packages, you may also use remi-test repository as shown below. The remi.repo and remi-test.repo are not activated by default. You'll have to either provide command-line option, "--enablerepo=remi" or edit the /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo and activate the repository.

# yum --enablerepo=remi,remi-test install php-pecl php-mysql 
  php-pear php-pdo php-gd php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-xml