Fix CI/CD pipelines using EPEL repositories for EL7 (RHEL7, CentOS7)

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on February 5th 2025 - Listed in Linux Git

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In case you're still building packages or something similar for EL7 distributions, you might run into errors if you use the EPEL repositories.

EPEL Error 404

I noticed this problem on a GitLab pipeline, where a RPM package (built in the previous pipeline step) should be installed. The RPM package in question requires some dependencies from the EPEL repos. Once yum tried to install these, the following error showed up:

Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package myfancypackage.noarch 0:1.1.25-1.el7 will be installed
--> Processing Dependency: /usr/bin/perl for package: myfancypackage-1.1.25-1.el7.noarch
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] HTTPS Error 404 - Not Found
Trying other mirror.

Obviously this error broke the pipeline for el7...

As this pipeline wasn't triggered in several months, nobody was aware that the pipeline now failed.

EPEL 7 repos have been archived

Taking a closer look at the EPEL repo confirms the 404 error; the EPEL repository is empty!

Instead of a bunch of packages and other metadata files, only a README file is left.

Let's take a closer look at this README:

ck@mint ~ $ curl https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/README
ATTENTION
======================================
The contents of this directory have been moved to our archives available at:

http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/epel/

If you are having trouble finding something there please feel free to contact EPEL maintainers. [1]

[1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/#communicating_with_epel

As EL7 distributions are officially EOL, it makes sense to archive the EPEL repos as well.

Something similar happened to the original package repositories for CentOS 7.

Luckily the EPEL repositories for EL7 are working as before under the new archive URL.

Note: As so-called repository mirrors usually sync itself with the original EPEL repository, they also empty themselves as the original. If you want to continue using a mirror, you need to look for a mirror of the EPEL Archives.

Pipeline working again

After adjusting the baseurl in /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo to the new archive URL (inside the machine launched by the CI/CD pipeline), the jobs of this pipeline were running fine again.

[epel]
name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch
# It is much more secure to use the metalink, but if you wish to use a local mirror
# place its address here.
# EPEL for EL7 is now archived, use the archive URL below:
baseurl=https://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/epel/7/x86_64/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
countme=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7

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